in sleep,
you lay
open
letting the night sky
grow emptiness into
a joy
an infinite dream
an ocean of poems
an idea,
a voice,
falling from the stars
and kissing you on the cheek
laying flowers beside you
gazing lovingly at your faults
your love
and your presence
there is always a sorrow and a darkness
a sense with a constant wish
to sit on your chest
making it hard to breathe
toxic smoke
twirling around your nostrils
making a home out of your lungs
but if you listen
if you listen
there is a loving cleanliness
that is stronger
beating ever brighter
watching as you rest
and imagining the sunlight
that your eyes will create
whispering the safe word
and it is all going to be okay
breaking down the great walls that surround your heart
the room that holds the ways to no longer have to guess
the room that holds all of the answers you long to possess
finding dead parts along the way
signs of only having lived and survived
wandering around the room
realizing the walls really are gone
and oh no—what is going to happen to your heart now
the aching feeling in your stomach
is no match to the power and purity that is to come
meet me at the window
you will lose your breath
but there will be a true escape
full of a growing stardust
and stability
that will put shame to the label that reads “fragile: handle with care.”
and you will ask yourself,
but is this a window or a mirror?
and then you will realize that this question is the point of everything
alluring the tongue of the hidden rays
that shines onto a finally revealed trust
thrusting itself upon your shoulders
and you cannot ignore it now.
a deeply powerful realm
that you have fought so tirelessly to find
reflections will always be reflections
but reality is never a constant
it will be hard to prevent yourself from rebuilding the walls
but take a deep breath
revel in the lightness you feel
and do not forget to remind yourself of the burden of its opposite
it will be even harder to grasp this new feeling
this new reality
but it whispers to you
endless
moonlight running through your veins
illuminating your beautifully constructed being
there is no reason to mourn the loss of so much dead weight
the heavy shadows that have finally drifted away
and soon,
once you awake
you will realize it wasn’t just a dream
the reflection will disappear
only to become a reality
and i promise
i promise
you deserve this beaming experience
that is burning with comfort
and entities pulling love into your fingertips
the intense knowledge that you awake with
the truth floating all around you
will embrace you in its arms
and there won’t be any more questions
but an early thirst to continue to chase after this luster
with a surrounding magnitude
that grows stronger off your heartbeat
and in the morning
when the flowers are still there
the anxiety will not be
and you will gracefully arise
an unknown entity
with a force so powerful
no words will be uttered
but spoken unknown
embracing continuously
what it feels like
to be so
free.

my fingers have become blind
to the passing warmth of years and
my lips have forgotten
way too soon

I long to know the place in you
No one else has ever seen
Deeply and intimately

I long to reside in the secret place of your heart
The room no one else will ever be able find
Quietly and passionately

I long to possess every part of you
So I can love you in your entirety
Every single thing you loathe about yourself
Every single piece you hide away for safe keeping
Every single particle of you and your whole existence
Tirelessly and completely

I long to love you
and love you
*and love you

With my head full and churning
I find comfort in my cigarettes
As I endlessly and tirelessly
Search for a way to turn my mind off
To no avail

I've been hurt more than I've been loved
You can tell by the way I kiss (too softly)
And by the way I hold your hand (too tightly)

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

Sometimes I feel like one of the books that sit on my bookshelf
Having yet to be read
Obtained long ago only to be immediately put away again
Forgotten
Lost amongst the others
Acquiring more and more dust as more and more time passes
And I wonder
Will anyone ever pick me up?
And delve into the words and worlds I hold deep inside
Fall in love with my tattered pages
And feel sad once they have read me cover to cover
Only to end up re-reading me again and again
Trying desperately to discover something new
To come back to me and flip through my pages
Returning to the underlined phrases
And reflecting upon the notes in the margins
Falling in love all over again
Will I ever become someone's favorite book?
One that will no longer be lost amongst the others
No longer long to be held
To be known
Will anyone ever love me so much
They will tirelessly read me over and over again
And never grow bored
Never grow tired
Carry me with them everywhere they go
Love me so much they will
Never leave me alone to gather dust again

Sometimes I look in the mirror
And have no idea who or what I am looking at
So I stare and stare and stare
Then I disappear all together
And I see nothing
And I see no one

Perhaps tomorrow will be the day that
The flowers will finally bloom
War is never easy
The pieces never smell the way they look
Forgotten wings in the game
Become shadows
And near the wall is where all of the goodbyes are said
Everything is dying
But the crying will eventually pass
Or so, that is all we can hope for
To dust off the past
And never forget that the idea of heaven was born from a desire to never be forgotten
Fear, a catalyst, among other things
Is a push and a pull
Heavy in control
Forever standing in the shadows

By: Evynne Doue

"It had nothing to do with you, love," you said
"You're perfect to me," you said
It made my heart ache and ache
Why did you have to say that?
Right when it was starting to get easier

"I need to smoke a cigarette," I think to myself
"The cigarettes you smoke one after the other won't make you forget him," I mutter through clenched teeth
I feel as though my molars might crack under the pressure
I feel so tense and weak and alone

You touched me and then you loved me
You left me and then you broke me
You made the wanderer in me stay and build a home
I built the foundation up and around your heart so I could be your heartbeat,
Residing in your chest, underneath the warmth of your tingling flesh

With no prior notice you evicted me
You demolished my home, my comfort, my bliss
You left me cold and sad and heartbroken
With no where to go

You shouldn't make promises you can't keep

You are a good friend of mine
Always there, always so kind
You help me through the bad times
Always there, always so sublime

I am so very fortunate to have a friend like you
And you will be my friend forever, that I always knew
Thank you for all that you do for me
If it weren't for you, I don’t know where I'd be

Look at me!
I am an emotional bag of ****
I don't ever want to be without you
You came to me so suddenly
But I feel like I have loved you forever

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

I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately.
You are constantly showing up in my mind.
When I look at myself right now and who I am becoming again,
I think of you and every good thing about you
And every good thing you bring out in me.

I was lucky to have a man like you.
No one compares,
No one else exists.
Just you.

I know from experience how destructive it is to harbor something deep inside and bury it deeper and deeper until it's beneath the surface and doesn't feel like a real thing anymore. To make every effort to no longer acknowledge its presence and it's reality.

I also know from experience that this process is always extremely painful and detrimental to not only yourself but any other people involved, especially in the long run. It doesn't result in steps forward but a million steps back. It is not a progressive process and it should be avoided at every cost.

This doesn't mean that it is easy to do so. Especially when it hurts as much as it does. With all of those insanely strong emotions and reactions and feelings and thoughts attached to all of that pain, feeling as if they will never wither away and die. "Bury the pain, forget about it, don't acknowledge or nurture it, it will eventually go away and never come back!"

Just because you buried it doesn't mean its roots aren't still very much present.

Grow your pain. Nurture it. Begin the healing process. Turn it in to something that is good and positive. Recognize the lesson and reason behind it. Look at it as a chance to do better and to be better. Build it up until its presence begins to matter and become a defining aspect of who you are. This manifested pain will become something good and beautiful and more powerful and stronger than anything you could ever imagine. Instead of burying it and making it disappear, I urge you to fill yourself full until you are busting at the seams.

**That is the goal.

I heard
If you hug someone
And never let them go
They become a tiny bone
In your body
That you forget about
But could never
Live without

In this moment, I miss you more than ever.

As I bleed this apparent madness
My fingers float lightly on the surface
It's a lot like shards of broken glass
Being thrown at me in random directions and at random intervals
Dealing with this profound, physical and mental ailment
Considering faster and faster which method of action
Will finally be the chess move that determines my demise

Faster darling, what will it take?
The chase tells me to forgive,
To give in to these seemingly "peaceful" desires
That are really more like permanent containments

But I lock it all away,
Trying to avoid the relentless tugging that tells me I shouldn't have to live a life like this
And how is that not counterintuitive, I ask myself?
I am passionate, genuine, and capable,
Is this tugging only temporary?
Perhaps it is residing in an incubator full of vast magnificence

The healing, the healed, the puddles of a lifetime

Entities possessing faulty perspectives
Ultimately revealed through the escaping of some previously immersed ideal
You can twist the **** and discover a newborn adult
Residing in this oddly frightening dimension

Surfaces are frequently misunderstood
They reside within varying intents, across multiple different slates
In this effortless actuality
Emitting a breathtakingly amount of moments
That mesh together into
One wild thing

I tell myself that simpler days will come
That this never-ending cycle will get easier
That the best moments will find me and swallow me whole

Breathing, dying, taking steps towards one or the other
I keep forgetting that my anger shattered my sense of hope
And these friendly pieces of tattered poems I keep finding in between my fingers are nothing more than my lungs swallowing destruction

I bite my tongue again and again
And it never stops bleeding
The taste of metal ever-present
And still, no matter how much I feel like dying,
My lungs continue to fill with air and my heart continues to pump blood and oxygen throughout my entire body

When I drink, it worsens.
I just sit there and expect things to get bad,
To get worse than they already were
Destruction waits around every corner,
In every moment
And most times, I will let it in with open arms and swollen eyes
The tighter this thing wraps around me internally, the less careful I am with my heart
I will just sit and watch these emotions create sharp tunes that are guaranteed to become buried worth

I meant to write more letters
And I am sorry for letting my fear of the future get between us
But I am left wondering if that even means anything.

I apologize for letting the weight of my illness creep in to every facet of my life
And I am sorry that the older I get, the harder this gets and the more relevant my illness becomes

Sometimes I imagine my aura reeks of blood
Wondering how anyone could ever fully love someone like me
A red glow that appears to be calm and gentle
But is really thick and thunderous and difficult to love.

Am I a song that bursts open in the darkest of times,
Or am I a clock that seems to always be displaying the incorrect time?

I am told that things will "get better"
That it will all be "okay"
By those who have never really known what it feels like to hurt in this way
To possess this type of pain
Especially, when the deepest and darkest part of me glorifies loneliness
This thing, and the pain that goes along with it,
Is really only a product of its environment
And, well, doesn’t that make you want to question everything?

By: Evynne Doue

Passion,
Born from warmth
Fueled by the ****
It needs your flesh
Screaming souls
Slowing emotions
Let's form smiles,
Not scars

Just because you cannot return does not mean that the answer is still hidden
Dancing freedom began upon the palm of your hand
Where you stood in a blind whisper
Written veins reign closer and closer
The amateur is defeated
And a purer spirit exists
Only to be later faced
By an all-consuming entity

But when nature embraces the storm,
Strength is gained
And the stars cry out
Seeing sadness as only a
Symptom

By: Evynne Doue

Thoughts of you consume me.

Sometimes people get
Inside of my head and
I can't get them out
They write beautiful things
Inside of my head and
I fall in love with them

My happiness was so thick, I could almost taste it
(Or so I thought)

I am thinking about love and how it is basically just happiness and more words and feelings set on fire

You make my heart feel like it is jumping off of the golden gate bridge
And each time it happens,
A small part of me emits a small warning:
"You'd think it'd had learned its lesson by now…
Beware: you will also drown in this same feeling."

You make my heart feel like it is falling off of the tallest skyscraper in Manhattan
But now, it twinges a little just before
A small surge of doubt and caution and everything in between
Zips through me
And before I feel all of the adrenaline, all of the good that comes along with it,
There's this tiny little moment that is full of a dull and aching pain
But especially when you say things that feel like peeling skin back
And it bleeding
When you say things that sound a lot like a dusty record
That skips a lot
Things that feel and sound a lot like black holes and hospital waiting rooms
And so, I ask myself,
Again and again,
When did love become the same thing as pain?

By: Evynne Doue

Hearts are broken
And the love has sunk
When did everything get so ****** up?

The world is coming down
Down, down, down
Falling down
Turning to dust and ashes

The world is coming down
But the walls are going up
Up, up, up

Nobody can break through
Anymore

By: Evynne Doue