I know that there are Gods inside me
Because I have seen them
at 13 when I tried to let Wrath out through my wrists,
15, an attempt to drown Calamity with prescription pills
and Famine, too, looking down my empty throat
After my stomach was hollow, with only Grief inside of it
I have seen Lust in the way I ache for more sunlight
at 17 in the summer where I regrew Joy,
fed her small scraps until she could devour
the whole world, and me
the Pantheon inside of myself 19
All of us a maelstrom in my blood
but Pride, forefront
King of kings on my tongue
He says look at the shrine you have made yourself
Holy, and still growing.

I whisper your name into the darkness
And the tender light of dawn weaves it back to me
In a sunbeam that eclipses my eyes
I awake gasping with the taste of you burning my throat
You should not have followed me into the light here
All my memories of you are red rooms and bedsheets
Music with a heavy bass and the moon catching
On the sweat of our skin
I was always cold around you
Our heady breaths misting the air
You the tundra I travelled through
Crawled along the ice sheet of your body
Cut myself and crept bleeding
Hypothermia was quick gasps and a long exhale
Toes curling and frostbitten
I think the kisses you blew on my neck killed me
Or at least, I do not remember spring
Only your outline on the bed frosted over
I alone in a dark room with every star hidden
They say in an avalanche you can’t remember which way is up
And victims dig deeper trying to free themselves
In this, I do not know if I am the stiff fingers in the snow
Or simply the weight of a thousand lifetimes that were not for us
But I know intimately the unearthed corpse found 6 months later
Finally thawed enough to scream again
Moan a name that was not yours into a darkness
One that you had never touched
Even so, I wake up sometimes with numb lips
Icicles dripping from my doorframe
And your name melting on my stomach
I told you once I’d love you when hell freezes over
You told me ice was the great scalding of the world
I don’t think that’s true but sometimes
My tongue remembers

I have been in faraway places
searching for my shadow
in the night I feel her holding me
and it is so cold in the midday sun
where am i
where am i  
where am i

I dont want to get better i just want to have courage

my loneliness is larger than me
heavier, too
my loneliness the thick blanket
good for hiding under
my loneliness shields me from demons in the dark
but provides no warmth
my loneliness a cold fire I still sit beside
palms upturned, craving peace
my loneliness the war that rages unending
bodies left in a ****** wake
my loneliness the vultures swirling
I have never been very strong
my loneliness knows this, as she knows
all my other bitter secrets
my loneliness licks her smiling lips
opens her screaming maw
my loneliness is larger than me
deadlier, too

I sit here, using the pen I stole to write this
And wonder if you see my face in the steam of your coffee
Like I hear your voice in the half-murmurs of everyone around me
I count 11 empty seats in this cafe and see your ghost in all of them
When I met you, you smelled like ground beans and woodsmoke
Velvet against my mouth, I had become addicted
To your taste, both bitter and sweet
I would cup your face in my hands and tell you
That there was more warmth here than any drink
Your hazelnut eyes crinkled and we would laugh
Throaty and dark, I melted into the hum of it
When you left me, every glass in the house shattered
I was made entirely of cracks, overfull and leaking
My heartbreak a great chip that grew only larger
We touched for the last time and I felt the fire of you
Found it scalding against my cheek
The whisper of a bonfire as you walked away
Only tar black and thick against my rasping throat
I choked on every memory of your lips
Still, sat here, in this room that is all you
Only 2 empty seats now, enough for us
Enough for our ghosts to laugh together
I pack away the books, the stolen pens
Leave my latte, grown colder now
Untouched

I can hear my bones talking to God, they ask him why he hates us and he says he wrote the fracture lines in our skin with perfect precision, he did not create us with the knowledge to heal.
And yet.