Breathe each breath as if you are inhaling the sunrise of a new day**
            Possibility filling your lungs
        Every cell in your body
Dancing to the rhythm of a fresh start.

"Don't touch me...*"

But that's all I want
Touch me
Please just touch me
Even though I'm fractured and broken it's all I want
You frame my face in your hands and call me beautiful
But you've never asked why I wear warm clothes year round
I want you to touch me
Down my side beneath my sweater
Over my thighs seemingly permanently masked by dark jeans
Across my stomach and around my back
Touch me
Trace all these fractured cracks that were abandoned
Abandoned and called imperfect when my title was taken from me
You call me beautiful to my face
But can you say it to all of me
Touch me
And show me what I mean to you

Please be patient with me,
I know, sometimes I get angry
over rather stupid things.
Usually because I want your time,
your affection...
I know in the end,
we're not disconnected.

I thought I loved the East Coast until I saw your eyes look back at me under the moonlight slipping through the window.
I thought I loved the East Coast until we were pressed together, laughing, trying to fit on your twin mattress.
I thought I loved the East Coast until I felt your breath on my neck at four in the morning.
I long for the Pacific and for you to take me there.

Tempestuous pestilence of manic depressive tendencies invested in a message cocked and loaded as a centerpiece

           Unfold it, if you will,

   The beast lives in these pages
  While the people all went home to their own separate cages
Locks become phones that never ring
  No bars but still encasing, these cells are in our genes
   Its a prison of DNA strands unlocked with a paper key*
    Held firm by *words written within the world awaits to see

"I love you."
Words can't touch me anymore.
My skin is coated in lies
Nothing penetrates.
My last hope is caught in my throat
And I can't swallow it,
Bumps and bruises are hidden behind
"I'm fine," "I'm just tired."
Words are branded into my skin.
They have left layers of scars
So thick there's no room left to carve -
So imprinted there's nothing left to root.
Nothing more to say to boot.
Prickly like a porcupine, consonants stick off of me,
Petruding like my long buried personality
Used to,
Like my personality used to.
Vowels form a new face of expressions
I was once able to pen for myself
But now
I can't.
I wear words instead of speak them;
I wear words like a coat of armor on top of my numb skin.
I swear words don't even touch me anymore.
There is no need to carry a shield ,
Instead you built for me a castle.
And I'm somewhere inside,
Untouched.

This bracelet
This bracelet means nothing, really
Just some plastic beads
Black thread
Uncomplicated knots with strings of offset orange, yellow, green.
It’s just a bracelet.

But it’s your bracelet.
Your bracelet.
The replacement for the blue one I lost in New York
The one I hated myself for dropping
But you never did
You just fixed it
And every time I see it,
It’s like I’m there with you again

My heart leaps from my chest
At it’s shining, vibrant face
Smiling at me like an old friend
Because that’s what we are

When I’m nervous, I twist the band
The beads click and dance and sing in my fingertips
I think of it like those ruby red slippers
Maybe if I click it enough times you’ll appear next to me

I wish that were how it worked
Wished the bracelet could talk me down
Off of this ledge of conclusions
But it can’t.
We will never be the same...
Unlike the bracelet.
Because when it comes together on my wrist,
Kissing the skin you used to

It feels like you
It feels like home

There will be a morning
Like all the rest
When you turn over and open heavy lids
As you exit slumber you are startled
Because you are alone

You fell asleep alone
Yet you will be surprised
You call out, remembering the lives that once mingled with yours
They can be heard calling back
But they are not calling back to you

You lay in your nest
Wondering how all the birds flew away
When you've barely hatched

Inspiration strikes a sadness in my mind
Lightening fires of truth so bright I go blind
Wide awake yet dreaming of another time
Another place where things used to be fine
But in the back of my mind, where that inspiration strikes, I feel alive and alone in the sadness that overwhelms me at times, surrounded by the dream floating behind my eyes uncontrollably, bouncing off my mind getting ideas of time and space and distances between two places, satisfaction and depression, a thin line rests between my eyes, like a target, the bullseye is my soul and it's slowly disintegrating with every shot, look and insult fired my direction.
I'm losing control.
And my dreams are gaining ground, taking over and my reality is lost in the background.
My soul can no longer hear a sound.
I think I've died.
I've tried to come back around, telling myself it'll be alright.
But I lied.

Dragging my knuckles* on the sidewalk
      I find myself hoping for a *spark
     that would confirm my mechanical makeup
        Titanium and servos buried mere inches beneath faux flesh
        Scraping concrete

         *Friction, it would seem,
           is the only force powerful enough to reveal me to myself