the first cut is the deepest,
I’ve made two rotations around the sun,
since I buried your bones in the graveyard
next to the tree,
where the name of every person I have lost is carved,
except that tree is my heart,
and there are so many slits,
I’m surprised it’s rhythm still echoes across this earth,
I wish I knew a love that did not involve
my body throwing itself off the deep end,
in the presence of souls who do not know how to swim,
hoping love would be enough to magnetize their soul to follow mine,
maybe he just didn’t want to drown,
my love has that effect on people,
it is suffocating,
It is a strain of oxygen that will intoxicate your lungs,
It will get you so high,
you’ll start to see the future,
it’ll start to look more and more like my bones,
until my palms tell you my life line is fading faster
than the moon blurring into the horizon line come morning.
The future is someone I put to rest years ago,
only to realize that it’s ghost has been coming back to haunt me for years,
In search of the person who could finally resurrect her,
and I think she thought he was the one,
he made me forget her initials were even carved into that tree,
that she wasn’t still breathing,
he made me feel like she was within my reach,
that I could pull her by threads from the earth and bring her back to life,
but depression infected my body,
and I have been changing in shape every day,
like clay in the hands of a sculptor,
my silhouette has been transformed into so many alternate forms,
that over time,
he forgot who he fell in love with,
convinced himself that person was never coming back.
he reached that point in his intoxication where he craved sobriety,
like he was seconds away from being pulled by his veins to the depths of hell,
could feel the flames against his skin.
he got too high and maybe I did too,
but the difference is my instinct is always to jump from mountains,
and to sink in oceans,
I do not know how to consistently stay in one place,
my pain is like gravity,
it always pulls me back down,
his love was like watching the sun reflect on it’s light,
after days of rain,
except I was the sun,
hidden behind the rain which my clouded head brought upon his earth,
when all the serotonin evaporated into the sky,
i stared at the mess I made after the storm,
I felt guilty about my light,
didn’t feel worthy of it,
I saw my reflection,
In puddles,
riverbanks,
I didn’t recognize the person staring back at me,
he told me that he didn’t either,
I don’t blame him for jumping,
to escape the storm,
but the difference between him and I,
is if I jump,
I only become more deeply immersed in myself,
I jump into oceans of my own depression’s precipitation,
baptize myself in the backsplash.
my best skill has always been breaking my own heart,
taking an axe to it’s trunk,
every time I feel the ground shake,
everything always has to be on my own terms,
I won’t let the storm rip it’s roots from the earth,
I’ll do it myself,
I am an artist,
an artist in sculpting my own demise,
I can’t differentiate my palms from the storm anymore,
can’t separate the clouds from the sun,
the past from the present,
love from the sensation of dying,
with every name comes more blood,
I fall but don’t know it until my bones have already hit the pavement,
maybe I never really stood up after the first time,
I put you to rest,
and your ghost still haunts me from afar,
as I watch someone else inject you with helium,
pull you back up,
from where I left you to die.