a bitter exhaustion grips you by the throat
fear languishes your bones like lead upon your skin
a dark cave dripping numb from within

do i dare to look up again?
do i dare to give my heart as the bargain?
are you gonna break my fall,
or will you tell me you can't handle this all?

i dont want to start new anymore than you
for loving, feels like the flu
but maybe you’re the vaccine
ill take a shot of you, hoping then         i would feel              brand new
tell me, do you feel like this too?

I miss the old me
Old old old old me
Young me
Full of life me
Still
Innocent me
Now I don’t like me
I let you take me
let you break me
I still can’t face it

I miss the old old old old me
Old me
Young me
Full of life me
Still
Innocent me
Now I got scars on me
Scars on my heart
Scars on my eyes
Scars on my brain me
What do I see?
I miss the old old old old me
Old me
Young me
Full of life me
Still
Innocent me

What do you see?
See I can’t see me
Too in the dark type
Never turn on the night light
Always assume the worst type
I miss the old me
old old old old me
Old me
Young me
Full of life me
Still
Innocent Me.

There is no heartbreak like the heartbreak from loving someone who you can’t fully express it to.
You’re stuck, hanging, dangling from a rope.
Your palms are torn apart from grasping the rope so tightly.
Your fingers, purple from your blood.
Your emotions, blaring loudly cascade over you in flash floods.
Everything around you seems to be falling apart.
And you’re praying the only person you feel that can make it fall back together doesn’t let go of the rope.
Because the cracks in the sidewalk will swallow you whole.
Swallow you over and over until you are dust settled atop tectonic plates.

‪I was just a temporary relief,‬
‪from the places you really wanted to be.
An escape,‬
‪but it never set you free.‬
It turned out to be a place,
that chained you and me.
Only it chained us separately,
confining you and me irreparably.

Waking consciousness only deepens the breadth of the sickening settling confusion that blossoms so heavily in thorny crowns around my hands so that they are pinned to my thighs like how beauty marks litter your skin from too much time spent in the sun. I spent too much time basking in your black hole confused about how the light wasn’t shining on me...instead my light was being ****** in. ****** from my veins so that eventually every inch of my body was decorated with black vestiges of the rivers that once flowed blindingly white. It’s been six months of half a year, and my body is still sectioned out in slippery squares that feel so impossible to stitch back together. How can I still drown in the valley of our broken love if the pitcher that filled it has crumbled into tiny grains of sand, that I cannot hold with my hands? Oh Lord, won’t you reconcile this desert that settled on my heart? Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord. I want to be found. I want to be found. Can you hear all the sounds that ricochet like tennis ***** against the tennis court? Oh Lord. It’s deafening from down here.

Loving drugged me, so suddenly
I couldn’t tell if you made it rainy or sunny
But keep talking sweet like that, hunny.
Cause I’m tired and hungry
Feigning like a heartbroken ******
Loving drugged me, so suddenly
Now I’m a heartbroken ******.

I don’t know what I’m looking for
But I’m looking for something
And I keep ending up back at
“Everything is nothing”
Which means that nothing is something
And the thoughts refuse to stop coming
I know there’s no running

I cant escape being in this ring
Forever feeling like every direction is a haphazard swing
I can’t see a thing
Feeling like society’s puppet on a string
There’s a list I keep, sorta sloppy neat
But God tells me, “take a seat”
I yell back, “that’s no easy feat”

I don’t understand what all of this is for
Life feels like a game, except I can’t score
I can’t open the ****** door
They wanna say, “when life closes a door, it opens a window”
But all I see is a **** show
That’s not to say, I don’t see the beauty in how a river flows
That’s not to say, I don’t see the beauty in how the same river froze
You can tell me I’m dramatic, that I wallow in my throes
And yeah Lil *** told me, “that’s the way life goes”
But I’m fed up with everyone’s prose
I don’t want to believe that’s really how it goes

And so I sit with Robert Frost
At his two roads, curious at how he tells me he’s actually not lost
How it’s not left to the probability of a coin toss
That everyone just wants to be their own boss
Pretending that they aren’t nailed to their own cross

I don’t know what I’m looking for
But I think maybe I’ve been playing the game wrong
That there is no score which could lead to more
All I’ve got is a case of nothing being something
And that’s really nothing more
Than “everything is nothing” for sure.

I wanna make you feel waves of something
Waves unlike the motion of your sins

Let me strip your skin
Is that too deep? Cause from up in the trees, this path looks scary steep
Although I know, your laugh in my ear is something I wanna keep

I’ve had my eyes wide closed
My dreams colliding kaleidoscopes

I thought you were just a passerby but you said more than just hi
Sometimes I don’t know what to say
The words stumble away
Although I know, the feeling moves me like a drunk sway

Your fingertips brushed the shimmering sunlight dancing in between my trees
And suddenly, the tightrope time tied to me fell free  
My bare feet struck unfound grounds
Puddle colors exploded like how bass sounds
Although I still don’t know, where the music can be found
I do know, you’ve got me spellbound

You’ve been running around my mind
I’ve been stuck trying to find
the right words this time

I’m not tryna make you stay
I’m just tryna get you to talk about your day
Maybe get a little intellectual foreplay

Lemme be your baby
Lemme be your sunshine
Lemme make you mine
I’ll show you how a real woman loves
Hold you tight
Show you this might be worth the fight
I got you and you got mines

You told me time travel exists
But baby, then there would be nothing to miss
There’d be no wish to be
Us caught up in the sheets

I’ll soak you in like a summer night
Cause your company is like how my bare feet feel against warm concrete sidewalks
Like I said I’m just tryna get you to talk
Maybe take a midnight walk

I think we already do
We’ve been climbing mountains, me and you

Some things happen without your full awareness. These things come slow and then all at once it’s like a river rushing over you and you panic for a second. Your heart races and you can’t understand how it happened but it’s happening and it won’t stop happening. You’re not sure if you’re falling or flying. Maybe a little bit of both. All you know is that it sort of feels like you’re climbing mountains together and the sunsets you’ve been watching every evening are cascades of reds. The only thing you’re really sure of is that red is your favorite color.

Like lead, you sit on my skin
encapsulating every beat, breath and emotion
My knees weak
My eyes swollen shut
Everywhere I turn something of you interrupts

The rapid fluttering in my chest
the tight heaving breaths

My mind clamors
every thought
so heavy against my ribcage

Like the poison you're drowning my veins in
I want to cross out your name
Rip you out from that moment
never to see, feel or hold again

My nerves ache
they scream to be let go

You and I
Used to be like two branches intertwined
Now we stand separate as two trees.

How can that be?
To be together, yet feel so lonely?

Two many crows sit in my leaves
My limbs ache
from holding so much weight.

The wind doesn't whisper
It's silent
Like the space in between
You and I.

My chest feels hollow
Spaces and craters
Where my lungs and heart
Used to be

My mind is seared
With images
I can't seem to shake
From the retina of my eye
Sort of like when you stare at a light for too long and then look away
A shadow of what once was, still there

When I look to my hands
They are shackled
To you
There's a lock
But no key

A whimper from the swollen part of my insides
Almost wants to say goodbye
But I'm shackled
To you
There's a lock
But no key

My toes burn
A fire engulfs my feet
I'm no longer a tower
I'm only crumbling to my knees

I wander
Lost at sea
Lost in you
Lost in me

I wonder
How to be
With you
Or just me

Questions
I can't answer
Haunt me
I'm shackled to you
With a lock
And no key

My heart is pockmarked
Like the face of the moon
Oh, from loving you
And you and you

The craters on my heart
Left, from the massive destruction
Of giving so much
In return, receiving nothing

From a distance
My love appears whole
But those pieces have been lost
Oh, to you
And you and you

Are hearts really pink?
Mine feels black and blue
Oh, from you
And you and you

My heart's fire
Burns passionately around the blackened craters
Oh, not for you
And you and you.

I'm stuck in an in-between
and it seems to me
that to be in the middle
of an emotion
of a fear
is more tantalizing
than the engulfment of a solid knowing

I'm stuck in an in-between
and it's paralyzing me
Do I harden the door that sits in the pupil of my eye?
Do I fall to my knees?

I'm stuck in an in-between
and there's all this tension seeping out of me
in smothering screams
Do I lessen my grip on your gravity?
or Do I give more of my naivety?

I'm stuck in an in-between
and it's gonna make a black hole out of me.

A bottle,
for your emotions.

Laugh they do,
"Bottling unable-impaired are we."

Deepest, softest, hardest
They cry.
Babbling, roaring waves waterfall into cascading hues.

Hues
A blind eye could see.
Color, color, color feeling
For vestiges of buildings and movie credits.

Bottle, bottle
Not me.

Color feeling instead.

It burns your joints
A silence, so loud, it ricochets off the walls in your mind
It is not a deafening silence
It is the kind that makes your ears ring
A quickening of the pulse
Invasive to the mind, like a dog's bark at 5:30 pm on a chilling December night
Your soul is screaming
Your toes are purple when you look down at them in the shower
It's all surrounding you
Pressing your arms to your sides as water runs over your mouth
Your pulse thuds in your ears so loud
It is equivalent to a locomotive train
It burns your joints

The steady thump sounds dull to my fingertips touch.
Shadows bend silently towards the spot in which I stand.
Rooftop corners morph into reaching hands.
Bare treetops beckon me.
Tiredness engulfs me,
Like the setting sunlight silhouetting the naked trees.
The tectonic plates beneath the surface of my skin shift ever so slowly.  
Allowing an ache to snake through me in whispers.
My blood gurgles in response to the changing sunlight,
To the rise in temperature.
My body ceaselessly remembers,
What my mind has tried so hard to erase.
So that I cannot pin the shiver that runs across my skin.

Your eyes started to turn like the leaves of October.
By November a stillness settled around you.
The barren trees whistled your name.
My heart thudded in my chest.
December crept around.
Your gaze no longer held mine.
It snowed.
My hands were cold.

I lay in my bed as the heat seeps through the mattress. My hair sticks to my neck from sweat. The green blanket thrown over my window casts a sickly green throughout my room. Shadows dance and my mind grasps onto them tightly like a child on his mother's finger in an unknown place. There is a dead weight that lays across my body. A weight cemented into my skin that traps all the feeling inside of me....brewing a storm. Sobs shake my body as I scream into the corridors of my tunneled mind. Screams of "WHY!" over and over. Screams of your name, and screams of the pain you inflicted as you shoved your poisoned knife right through my heart with bloodthirsty knowing eyes. The lyrics to the song playing murkily float about my body. Rubbing salt in the wounds of your sick play time on my heart. The blanket over my window doesn't satisfy my hunger for the deep darkness my mind and heart crave so readily. So I grab the bottle of cough syrup with a tight face from salty tears and drown in it hoping your eyes will disappear for a little while and so will your name.

The only faucet into which I pour out my inner thoughts
Has become silent
The handles are oxidizing and the pipes are frozen
Thousands of voices attack the metal walls in my mind
Bouncing
Echoing their thoughts until I swear up and down they're my own

I'm sixteen
I still can't exactly swing on a swing without being scared
I suppose it's a metaphor for life
To have fear of such a childish contraption
I'm afraid of the motion
I'm scared of falling off
But I'm not scared of falling into you
I will do it over and over and over again
I will collide
I don't fear it
I don't fear you and I
I was swinging yesterday
My stomach felt awful
I told myself to stare at something
To get lost in the thought of you
Concentrate on what I was doing
It was nice to drown in something for once
To not hate the feel of not being able to breathe when I thought of something
Maybe because it was not something dark, it was you
I drowned in your magnificence
I probably looked like an idiot sitting in a swing, smiling like a giant goofball
But I didn't really care in that moment
Because even though you were not there in person
I held you in my heart
My mind
My smile
Nostalgic settled upon my bare shoulders
Like the last rays of sunshine
A profound hush smothered my neighborhood  
I never had a swing set when I was a kid
But ironically now that I'm sixteen there is a swing set
In my backyard a couple years too late
Another life metaphor
Sometimes the best language is the unspoken kind
But I'm here screaming out with every word
That I love your everything in the loudest voice I can
The miles between us might muffle my voice
I just hope you can feel my heart beating as loud as a locomotive train

I've been boxing with the pain for the past couple days and nights. I'm so scared, so scared of letting it win. I don't ever want to experience darkness to that depth again. I never fathomed the immensity of my fear until I awoke with its vice grip around my throat, making my vision blur with dots. I don't want to go back, I don't want to go back, I don't want to go back. The future seems to be a looming monster that feeds off of broken hopes and dreams because it's truly only the past. If time is a flat circle and it just keeps going in loops it's not present, there is no now. Now can't exist because as soon as now is now it's the past and it's gone. Then again maybe it's not because of the one uncountable instant that now seemingly happens and is the present. What exactly do I fear? Is it really the depth of darkness I fell into or do I fear the fear of it because that means I had no control over something in my mind? Do I fear the fact of my self absorption that leads me to admit that I'm powerless against the mechanics and systematic happenings of happening? Why am I so desperate to control the trajectory of my future? Because I know I'm powerless against the will of happening. I'm so desperate to control the uncontrolled and to prove what? To prove what? That I succeeded in bending the trajectory of something I shouldn't have? To prove that I have power? It doesn't work that way yet I will still sit in my stupid box pretending to be afraid of the darkness of which I evolved from, the darkness that I'm a product of. I will sit with a blindfold across my eyes with the stupid idea that my future is something to be controlled by sheer force of will.  Why am I so human? I guess I should say I'm fond of paradoxes.

Trusting steady for flower petals floating on moonlit beams.
Fractured cracks running into sewn seams of honey-colored threads.

Layering sunlight of emotions,
Rip-tide oceans hold your boulder heart open.
Velvety warm blankets shimmering with lavender energy,
Of a silence unspoken.

A roar within of a constant fiery flame.
A warrior armored with stars and an army of willowy trees.

Song buds upon lip, striking a symphonic flowery melody.
Eyes sparkling, you captivate with an alluring smile.

Flowers intertwined within your raven locks.
Summer night of fireflies and dancing bees,
Forgiveness never a weakling of knees.

Soft spoken heart beats.
Sun-fire but shaded with purpling blues.
Steadying hands even though your lips may frown.

Ever present is the sleepy shadow of a sugared temptation,
That only the befallen will know.
A darkness muddled into the after-hours of dawn.
Self-pity wars that your feet danced into nothing, no more.
You let the colors become vibrant yellows, even greens.

A warrior surrounded by atmospheres of light,
Tinged with the milky blue hue of night.
Oceans come and gone but forever in your heart is song.

The decibel of your voice out beat my heart
I smoked you in with every pull of your toxic love
I exhaled you out with dull eyes

All I wanted was you
All I wanted was the moon
To make love to the tide on your shores
All I wanted was for the sun to shine
Where I stood
But the decibel of your voice out beat my heart

I screamed into the twilight corners of my room
I destroyed myself with pills
With hopelessness cough syrup
With colorful memory alcohol

All I wanted was to touch your skin
To breathe your scent in
All I wanted was to show you the lights of your shadows
All I wanted was you
"ALL I WANTED WAS YOU! YOU!" I scream at your picture on my wall.
"All I wanted was you, all
I wanted...." I whisper through cracking heaves of sobs.

Where did it go wrong
Where did it go wrong
Go wrong
I'm lost in translation
I'm sky high in breaking my rib bones
But the decibel of your voice still out beat my heart in your ears
It still out beat my heart
It still out beat
It still
Still
Still

When does it stop
When does being lost in translation stop
When does the reality of temporary become permanent
And reality a finality of time
When do shadows stop eating at the nothingness of everything
When do the questions stop and become the answers
When does relief come
Or does relief just falsify into a cast of the illusion of okay
"When does it stop?" I ask you.
"WHEN DOES IT STOP?" I scream at the shadow of your profile in the depths of my painted wall
And my skin feels tight as it is suffocating my shackled veins
"It doesn't, does it?" I ask you.
"IT DOESN'T, DOES IT?" I scream at my shaking hands full of fury and broken glass
I said I was sorry, that I didn't mean it
You said I did, you said I did
You said it was okay, you said it's okay, you said it's okay
Okay is nothing but an illusion of this fragmented world
It's not okay.
It's broken, it's fury, it's shackled and turbulent
It's glass in my palms made of tiny pills
That cut my throat as I swallow you down
In hopes you'll love me again.