Dear Talia,

I don't want to be a tortured artist.
I don't want to be depressed and I don't want to be anxious.
Competitive sadness and disorders treated like accessories disgust me.

The world glamorizes mental illness, and I don't understand why. There is nothing romantic about being mentally ill just like how there's nothing glamorous about a broken wrist or a torn medial collateral ligament. There's nothing romantic about constantly being afraid that the world will fold in itself and **** you with it. There's nothing romantic about feeling like you could break down and cry at any moment.

This is the first piece I've written while being medicated.

I want it to be Christmas already.

The world dreams itself a halo, but can only attain horns. The halo is an illusion and the horns are an idea.

I'm due to take another Lorazepam. Would I look cool to the kids who idolize dysfunction and misinterpret pain as style, if I were to take one of these, with water and a distant glance, in front of them? Geez, to have their approval would to have everything and nothing at all.

I'm not sure why I've written as much about this as I have.

You.

It is 2:48 am and all I can think about, in this moment, is you.

I can't wait to spend Christmas with you. I can't wait to wear bad Christmas sweaters, and be the couple everyone hates, as we sing Christmas carols and spread holiday cheer.

I wrote this poem a few minutes ago. Sometime around 2:30 am. I'm not sure. I'm exhausted:

I sat on the edge of my bed, and on the edge of my life,
medicated to the point of pointlessness. Soft.
It was the nineteenth, not the twentieth,
and I wished I saw the fireworks with her fifteen days earlier.

My gasps tore the shingles off of the house.
And they hung suspended above the hole in the roof.
And God stared down into my room, as the shingles swirled skyward.
"I see you," I said, "but I don't believe in you."

I left home and ran until I was a dream that had passed itself.


I hope that was okay.

I love you.


Yours,

Joshua Haines

you write poems
about lost love,
broken hearts,
and failed redemption.

you write tragedies
about lonely nights,
crying minds,
and bleeding gashes of regret.

you write monologues
about voiceless mouths,
venomous words,
and inevitable decay.

you write autobiographies
about faded dreams,
unheard whispers,
and vanishing memories.

you write
about what once was.

and i do, too.

though i doubt your poems are about me
like mine are about you.

(a.m.)

Poetry is like gusts of fresh air
Harbinger of the soul’s catharsis
Flowing emotions through the pen
Concealed pain written across the pages
Healing the pain which was long buried

You stab me in the back with a knife,
and I apologize for bleeding on it.

My mind feels enclosed.
It's surrounded by walls that block my pen from its paper.
Perhaps its because I drew them there.
But whenever I draw a wall I always leave a door.
You seem to know how to enter my thoughts.
So next time we embrace would you mind leaving the door open.
So I can let all my thoughts run free.

I often question whether or not the choices I make are always the best.
But as walked down the street of a place I'll soon call home I feel relief.
And I think back to the pain it took to get here.
And ahead to the pain on the horizon.
But for once in my ******* life I feel this choice is one hundred percent right.
So let the pain flow on me.
Because I stopped running from it quite some time ago.

I write down my thoughts so they can breathe.
Don't mistake them for poetry.
I write to prove to myself that even on days I awake with my own blood on my hands.
I still am sane.
Or at least something similar to that.
Because if I was truly sane I would hate myself.
And I grew tired of that many months ago.