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  May 2016 Emily Joyce
Joshua Haines
She kisses the boys and girls
that pay the most attention.
The boys play with vapor
and her girls play with tension.
I wish I was the only one
that she will decide to touch
but I am who I am
and, in a way, that is too much.

Sawblade-sunflower petals
wrap around an earthy cushion,
and the humidity hangs in the air
as her beige body is crumpled
and I feel too sober, pushing.

Baby yellow falls apart,
in her hair the flower starts
to trickle onto sheet and pillow,
decorating the absences
that define how hollow
she and I have felt before --
******* like an endangered species
on the killing floor, I whisper once,
I whisper sweet, "Don't you wish
that we didn't meet?"

She kisses the boys and girls
that give the most attention.
I played with vapor
and she played with tension.
And what doth she speak, O brother?

"Eternal is the damnation,
Fleeting is the mercy."
Emily Joyce May 2016
No
No
I will not get you a gun
I will not help you hold it steady to your temple as your hand shakes
No
I will give you a number instead
1 (800) 273-8255
That's the suicide hotline
I remember the fist time you asked me for a gun
I was twelve
I waited until you were asleep before placing notes into your books
"I love you"
You were an avid reader and I knew you'd find them eventually
Looking through your books today I found one of those notes
I still wonder how many you found
I had spread them throughout the books in your wall to wall library
I remember how many I wrote
Twelve
One for each year I had been alive to love you
I still love you
Emily Joyce May 2016
I exchange my pain for needles
The needles may burn but the pain, it's like fire
Spreading through my veins until I can't fight anymore
The needles help, like water
The drugs spread and sooth me
Like a river flowing over dry, cracked land.
I exchange my pain for needles
I'm not afraid anymore
Emily Joyce May 2016
You are my ball and chain
Emily Joyce May 2016
Its been a year
On the anniversary of your death I went to school.
It was a Friday and I woke up late, rushing to get ready I forgot to put on your necklace.
All day I kept reaching for that necklace around my neck and every time it tore my heart a little more.  
Because just like the rest of the previous year, you were missing.
  Apr 2016 Emily Joyce
Joshua Haines
I know the horror
how you can't undress
without feeling like
a ******* mess.

There's got to be something
more than this,
just write until
your thoughts aren't as heavy.

Everyone glances
but nobody reads:
Pour your emotions
into a glass that
nobody drinks.

There's got to be something
more than
vulnerable words in vain:
a medicine
that increases the pain.

I know the horror
how you can't reveal
the fullest extent
of how you feel.

There has to be something
more than a glance,
to help you feel heard;
to validate your world.

Just learn to write
and let it all go,
even if nobody notices
or nobody knows.

Because there is something
more than this.
  Mar 2016 Emily Joyce
Joshua Haines
Some people die in Texas.
Some people die in Spain.
Some people die in their sleep.
Some people die in pain.

We were all in love with trauma.
We were all in love with the same
ideas we projected onto people
and disguised with their name.

I don't live in nine-eleven-land
and neither do my peers.
I've been monitored by other people's Gods
for twenty-two ******* years.
Coffee pots and cigarettes
stimulate my day
and keep the thoughts streaming,
that eventually fade away.

Some people die in Utah.
Some people die in Prague.
Some people never get married
or have the family dog.

We were all in love with status.
We were all in love with goals
that would make life poignant
and make ourselves whole.

I don't subscribe to the thought
that my thoughts necessarily matter.
If life is a horror movie,
then I'm the fake blood splatter.
Bible thumps and dead eyes,
are all part of my design,
and how I live and where I die
means to separate my mind.
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