lovely silence brushes over me
in ribbons of forgotten promises
and the wrong kind
of contentment

leaving behind the scars and bruises
covering them up with ****** band aids that have dirt all over them anyway
at least theyre hidden
i'll tell my friends about you and bite the inside of my cheek and hope blood doesn't spill out of the side of my face and hope the bruises don't show through the ****** makeup i put on my black eyes
tears don't even fall anymore except when i'm alone or when my mother tells me how destroyed i am

forgetting the traces of who i knew you to be and scraping off the dried blood
along my legs
and my wrists and picking the scabs of almost healed wounds
from when you slid your precious knife of prose across my skin
which carved our initials inside of a heart but skin doesn't last like bark does
and when we carved our poem into the concrete it dried only over my name
and our love is forever carved
into the sidewalk
along my hands.

the sinister smile of teardrops hitting the glass  
the shards of the window laying ****** on the carpet  
the sky turns dark i cannot help but compare it to this
sickness that crawls through my skin and out of my mouth and onto the paper
the glass is inside of my legs but i can't care
i can't feel anything but your hands around my throat

coffee stains and
empty pens and
toothpaste on the sink and open scissors
and laundry no one bothered to put away and an unplugged clock and
an open window and a
lamp with a lightbulb that's out and a scratched door and peeling stickers
and a cracked phone screen and a
dresser with all its drawers pulled out and an unmade bed
and shampoo bottles left open and
an open cereal box on top of the chair
and a sleeping girl

he walks with grace and an
unmistakable insecurity that tip toes with delicacy and an
unusual acceptance towards the idea of death which is probably better than those
who are afraid
he holds their hands
and then crushes them
he isn't mine anymore

her fingers traced the knots in the trees
and her laugh tasted like sugar
intentions never ran as purely as they did through her veins.
violet flecks of the sunset
and a lovers kiss
she is foreign to suffering
whimsical
blinded
a sheet of fog covers her eyes.

thinking of things only you would catch the light in
and things only your hands could touch with the necessary delicacy
like the sun on curtains on a Sunday afternoon
and an uncomfortable sense of nostalgia

they walk the same lines we did  
what a mistake to make today
a Tuesday is just a Tuesday now love

i still belong to someone else

the day i met you your voice sounded like charcoal and you told me mine sounded like cotton candy
antithesis was a constant
you watered the dying flowers that were growing along my back and
the delicacy
and grace with which you walked
reminded me of your fingertips that blessed the lilacs
the first time i saw you cry something grew inside of me
it wasn't darkness and it didn't hurt
it didn't make me want to scratch away at my insides
it was harmony  
and i sang to you on the phone while we fell asleep and you took my voice to cherish
and i bandaged your hands
i cleaned up the blood
and i held you in my own but i
didn't know mine would break soon too
and I didn't know you'd be the one to break them
so you took my hands
i gave you my skin when you said it smothered your sadness
you traced sunsets and a birdsong along my ridges and valleys
and i closed my eyes and your fingers became a part of me
you took my skin too.
sometimes you looked at me and you shook your head in awe
and you took my face in your hands and said i was so beautiful
but I didn't know what beautiful meant until you cried
you took my face too.
and you sang to me at night and i learned to fall asleep to the paradox of tears and happiness that played in your symphony
and your voice became the antidote and I wasn't scared to fall asleep anymore
you took my ears too.
and you stole
you stole all these things from me
peace doesn't exist inside of me anymore
the lilacs drowned in my tears and you took those too
i think you gave them away like you gave parts of me away
and I don't know who they belong to
but there's one thing you didn't take
and it was the only thing i wanted you to have forever

love

he hasn't seen me in four months and my body misses his eyes. the only solace I've found has been in his songs and they push me farther away from myself than they teach you to in school.
so i play the albums on repeat because irony has become inherent.
I haven't heard those the three words since that boy I used as a proxy said them to me and they didn't ring true so i hung up.
the only time i really picked up the phone was when he called and said them ten times over and i still have the messages but i've realized they didn't ring true either and
i'm trying to hang those up too but
the phone line is broken so they just play on repeat.

ashes ashes we all fall down
i light the fire i strike the match
i laugh out of hysteria i can't even see and i will probably choose to forget this
it's raining and it's cold even though it's May
but then again i've been freezing ever since you left
you offer me a drag and i look at you with glass eyes
everything has turned black and white you are the only thing that is white i cannot see anything but you
and that's how it usually goes
your voice has stopped my internal bleeding and i am so high