There is a woman
Eager with doubt
Missing the secrets
As kisses fade
Fears push onward
Foolish feelings surface

Sorrow keeps the gray hearts breaking
And the lonely souls aching

She paints the streets
Until they are glistening
Wildly
With her tears

Unforgettable bones
Have been buried
The emptiness
Mutates
Fading fingertips
Break
Expanding wounds
Ache
And Innocence
Is replaced
By a
**Monster

Sleeping lovers
Mad with drive
Naked hearts
Torn from their homes
Forcing lack of emotion
Drunk
Covered in dirt
Listening to the wine calling
Searching for the key
Locked away with
The demons

Quick, darling
The flames have
Barely covered
The garden
We still have
Time

Yesterday's
Distance
Is no match
For our
Loss

Someday,
The ghosts will bleed
And
We will win

Someday
He will forget
The bottle
And his
Reflection
Will make his insides
Scream

Shattered winds
Of vanished youth
The life drained
Definitively
From his very flesh
Pale and vacant
Void of
Everything good
He once had
In total awe
Due to the liquid’s
Draining
Power

Hollow
But sinking
Numb
But hurting

Weakness stands
At the door to where he
Once resided
It’s come for its
Fix
Thirsting for it
Burning under the
Control of
Its Addiction

But
He is
Nowhere
To be found
Lost
Somewhere else
Consumed
By something
Far more
Intoxicating

I kept all the photographs
We were beautiful and bored and weird, but we were comfortable
Trying to light cigarettes with a lighter that was out of fluid
Doing some drugs to make the world pretty again
Getting lost in our thoughts and getting lost in each other
Gazing at the world through the rearview mirror of his car
We had no idea

All we had, we lost
We were never meant to be part of the future
I looked at him and thought about the intensity with which I loved him
And yet, all I could hear myself say was, "We're not gonna make it"
Then he said it out loud
So I repeated it back
And we were so happy, so careless
We knew we wouldn't last so we laughed and laughed and carried on and kissed until our mouths were too dry and the day still wanted to last

We were beautiful and bored and weird
But we were never gonna make it
We never did make it

Love in an open hand
Free
Unhidden
And I am drowning in it

"Mental Illness"
Do those words excite you?
Look at me
I am a whirlpool of melancholy
I am a drain
I am filled with mania
I am a pulse
An endless flame
Of what perfect madness
I am every kind of fluctuation imaginable
"Mental Illness"
But I am so intimately rearranged
Put together in the most unique
And beautiful
And miserable of ways

"Mental Illness"
Ha,
*I am so much more than that.