this skin
a highway for your fingers
where you drive them down
this asphalt spine
and you stop
catch your tires in
the pits of my skin
the place where i picked and picked
until the blood came out from
the tender asphalt
but you just kept driving
you finally reach your destination
and we take moments to recollect
your skin / my skin
your car / my road
we are together.

you don't understand at all do you
not truly
you think
I'm a liar
that I still hold the knife
that
stabbed you in the back
[and in the heart]

kinda speechless
that you feel that way
think that way
believe it
untrustworthy? misleading?
false emotions?
can you not read?
here let me try again
maybe I can make it like braille
feel the words

it's like when the clouds stormy eyes
welled up and let fall the
tears of weekend rain
soggy, we laughed along with the thunder
and under our waterfall we let the windows
fog
tell me I lied then

or picture if you will
standing by the tree I
always parked by
it was a starry night, but we didn't see it
we were too focused on our faces
except
why is it I was the only one
drowning in the sadness that overtook my eyes
shaking with each strained, choppy breath
clutching that gray shirt like a life jacket
do you think that was all
for show?

haven't you looked at
my collection of black and white
silly letters scribbled down as fast as possible
trying as hard as I can
to leave it all
on the paper
but it's as if each word I write
is a tattoo
slowly invading every part of my skin
it's sinking in, it's staining everything
do you think this agony I speak of
is fake?

if so
if I am that liar with the knife who
led you astray and "******* you over"
let you down, kicked you around
if you can't seem to
open your eyes
and notice
just how much I love you
just how much I always have

then you don't deserve it

ill run miles for you when I know I only
have the strength for one
but don't you
dare
watch me run
if you don't even grasp
that I stabbed myself in the back
led myself astray

you have a right to
hate the wound
but if you can't see
what I feel
one day
I will learn
that I have to let go
and I will

then all these silly letters
all for you

well. go ahead and throw them away
on that day
they will carry no life
anymore

i am dreaming of the apocalypse
Satan coming down in all blue
declaring the color of suicide today is yellow
that the color of pain today is red
and that the color of god today is blue.

i am dreaming of the supermarket where
god and satan talk, loudmouthed and offensive,
consistently telling the other to *******.

i am dreaming of massacre and all of her
unholy penumbras / i have colored a sun named
after her and left it hanging from a noose in
the color hell of this bedroom. marking off her
endless questionnaire:

Are you suicidal? yes
Are you insane? Yes
Are you the discoloration of the world of tomorrow? The way the future looks drab from this point in time and seems even weaker from that present that belies you with the temptress of future? ...maybe?

i am not dreaming. i am cold and alone in a room
somewhere between purgatory and massacre
where both are a disaster and the real name is
probably something to do with psychiatry and
institutes. i am greeted by satan in blue,
god sulking half silent behind him, mumbling
something in streams of cadmium red.
he tells me; you’ll be staying with us.
he tells me; i wish you luck and hope you get better.

i am not dreaming. the floor is rising in rebellion.
a white flag raised from my side of the battle
both sides truce and lie themselves down
in the unwanted nowhere of persistent ailment
in a bed with paper sheets.

and the question is; am I insane? am i suicidal?
am I the discoloration of the world of tomorrow?
yes. yes. maybe. the question doubled in on itself.
so are you here for suicide? she asks.
yes. yes. maybe.
my disaster is rolling down my throat like
molasses and i want to die. satan’s color was
blue today, right? i look down. i am in blue.
are you here for satanism?
yes yes maybe
are you here for *******?
yes yes maybe
are you here for real?
no.

a bowl of black beans / your mother sitting on the other side of the kitchen / this liquidation of self / you would be something / anything / anyone / if it could make you safe / the black beans taste like nothing now / you aren’t crying but you’re **** near it / your mother makes a honey sweet remark / won’t you stay alive / and / eat your beans then we’ll leave / and you don’t have an answer but you listen / you are pleading with the voices to let you eat the beans and make them taste less like bleach / your mother bleached your hair when you were fourteen and you bleached your skin at sixteen / you drank that same bleach from that same bottle three days after your sixteenth birthday/ but this is a bowl of beans and it tastes like that time / smells like that time / your throat coughing up blood and your body wretching to *****.

a bowl of black beans / your mother takes that bowl and washes it out in the sink / you still have that hoarse voice from imagining it tastes like bleach / you still have that ***** wretch instinct because of how much your throat stings / then mother says; you’ll stay with them for some time / as if that makes anything better / a drive into the emptiness of a psychiatric hospital / a place they’d sent you when you were ten because you were so angry and so depressed / you break when the blue tiles turn to ocean and you drown / you break when the red tiles turn to fire and burn your toes / you are hungry again / but you know everything you eat will taste like bleach.

you can’t sleep because the bleach is still on your tongue / you think of that bowl of black beans / your mother sitting on the other side of the kitchen / maybe you’d see her smile again / maybe you’d be broken and be able to exist comfortably / don’t you want to survive to see that?

you answer / no / i’d rather die than be patronized.

o, you great young idiot!
you left blisters on my fingers from
lifting up all of your tiredness
trying to exalt it to heaven with human weight
i have broken exactly sixteen bones trying to
maintain the weight. lifting up your body
your suicide. your death. you made me
atlas and ******* my acl is torn and i have
arthritis.

o, you great young idiot!
you kissed a girl for the first time and didn't think
you'd ever be allowed to do it again. you thought
you'd be dead by next week but alas, you were
not and the reaper didn't take you in the night.
you kissed a boy for the first time and hated it.

o, you great young idiot!
you are sleeping in church and being forced to
realize god is over hyped. you think
maybe I'm wrong
but they always prove you right.

great young idiot!
don't **** yourself before the rains come.