Red, blue
and violet
Inside my mind, there is a riot
Gun fire
Bursts of desire
Will I rise higher
Or come crashing down
I always felt like I was meant for more than this town
But how can I escape
Design my own fate
When these walls I cannot break
If only I could reach out and take
My future
Pull it towards me so I can be there sooner
Oh, the irony
I want to escape reality
The painter of this picture is me
Too blind to see
I didn't even look at the canvas
Should have kept a steady hand
Scribbled all over it
Didn't give a ****
Now I’m left wondering who I am
Let myself decay
But I don’t want to waste away another day
So to myself I say, it is time for change
I have to rearrange the order of my brain
So things don’t remain the same
Gotta change my aim
Relight my flame
If life is just a game
I want to at least say I played
No longer will I sit out or be filled with self doubt
I’m going to love myself now
Or at least try
Life goes by in the blink of eye
If then ten year old me walked on by
Would they sigh or wonder why
I never tried
I never tried
I’m trying to look on the bright side
Always there will be high and low tides
All fears I must cast aside
The time has come to do more than just sit by
I want to see a change worldwide
So I have to start inside

A rising tide
Nationwide
To wash away this great divide

kissing you was like swerving into oncoming traffic

i can never tell if i am more haunted by empty picture frames or the ashes of their contents

you taught me that the saying "pick your battles" meant not answering when love was at the door

sometimes when i drink whiskey i swear i can hear your voice in the creases of my bedsheets & i sleep on the floor

i still catch myself running my hands over things you touched the most, looking for the echoes of your fingertips

i practice things i'll never say to you

i remember the day you told me you didn't like poetry, how "everything's already been said" & how "nothing meaningful can be captured without being cliche" you know, i don't miss you like the sun and moon, i do not miss you like tide bent waves crashing on the shoreline, i miss you like a chernobyl  swingset misses children

rumor has it that drowning is a lot like coming home, that drinking bleach can **** the butterflies in your stomach

for your love of cigarettes, i would have been an ashtray

this halloween i want to dress up as the you when you loved yourself and show up on your doorstep

i never understood what you meant when you said i was an instrument, back when you would cup your hands around my chest and breathe through the holes in my heart, i still wonder if the sounds i made remind you of wind chimes

i never paid much attention to abandoned buildings until i became one

in my dreams all the flowers smell like your perfume

i am the only person who has ever wished for the same snowflake to fall twice

if i could go back, and rewrite the definition of audacity, it would be how when we lost the bet of love, you said "we never shook on it"

i love you, if the feeling is not mutual, please pretend this was a poem

the only apology i want from you, is to have you repeat the names of children we will never have in your parents living room until they *****

we are the same person if you find yourself up at 4am dry heaving promises, or if you are kept awake by the laughter of those who've abandoned you

nobody ever told you that goodbyes taste like the back of stamps

sometimes i'm convinced that the only reason we hug, is so you can check my back for exit wounds