i inhale the things you say.
the frozen words burn my lungs
as my knees reach the ground.
i’m incredibly tired.
                                        still,
i act as a servant,
a lamb to the slaughter.
but this time,
i, the lamb, know what i’m in for.

despite everything i’ve been told to think,
your words are simply more than sound.

“goodbye”
the words crawl from your mouth.
they sound like their on their knees,
begging to be let go.
you tell me there isn’t a point anymore,
but i cover my ears
and claim i’m not listening.
the pills you swallowed,
the calls you never answered,
“goodbye,” you croak again.
i answer no,
but goodbye isn’t a question.

smoke escapes from your lips
and i am reminded of what i am here for.
you put your cigarette out
on your skin
and whisper while the whiskey water
stays settling in my stomach.

don’t worry,
i’m okay.
i just have to
be sad
sometimes.
to draw myself
back into my head
and make sure
everything’s working correctly.

peering out of my bedroom window,
i observe the golden autumn leaves
as they tumble through the air.
i watch in awe
as the wind licks them
from the honey coated trees,
and they gracefully settle into the grass.
in this moment of bliss,
i wonder how they are so unafraid to fall.

i need to have the earth on a skewer because i am nothing special. i am a harmless child, learning to twist up my tongue and articulate, so i need to grip these men in the palm of my hand. i need to scream until my bones twitch. this summer the edges of my world are going to meet and all the stars will fall flat. and it'll be all my fault. and i will smile so hard my lips will split. this summer i am turning backwards and nothing will ever be the same. take me back into your skin. cover me with a sheet and keep stabbing.

piercing eyes
burn straight through me.
i feel exposed
and peeled open,
as my last rational thoughts
drizzle through the gaps
between my fingers
and pile up on the ground
like wet sand.
i take my shaky steps
like the earth is depending on me
to prevent her from quaking.
and as the hands on the clock
reach out to strangle me,
i break a sweat
and try to choke out words.
i fail,
and the judging eyes judge.
the fragile silence is broken by whispers.

i am the toxins
melting into my brain.
i am drunk, i am midnight, i am destructiveness.
i want to be better,
not because you told me to,
but because i'm still melted in the melancholy
seeping out of my flesh
and dripping in between my fingers.
i want to be better
because the crushed up powder
still lingers on my hands
like fingerprints at a crime scene,
and it's slipping through the cracks in my skin.
i want to be clean and kind,
i want to be carnival lights and sweetness.
i want you to see me sober again
and i want you to know that i'm sorry.

if you open any old dictionary
and search for the word “end”
you may find so many definitions
for three letters in the thin yellowing paper
sitting still as they have been for so long.
three letters that will always remain
stained forever as an encumbrance,
forcing me to believe
that everything is but a straight line
that at some point is cut off
and usually gets lost along the way
long before then.

i feel like a puppet
a ventriloquist taking control—
i move hopelessly as their fingers
tangle with the strings,

making me dance,

                                    
                    ­                      dance,

      
           dance.

tonight feels infinitesimal so i curl at your feet like roadkill, dead but still full of hunger. i tell you in tears that i can't stop wishing myself away. what do you do to this feeling? how do you punish your pessimism without getting sick on the carpet? everything always takes me back to your eyes. and i cant stop thinking about the decay of all of it, the things i can't even remember. i am still hungry. there's a bearskin rug by the door. you eat fruit to the rind and you smoke to the filter and i love you more when you leave the cabinets unlocked. thank you, for all the horror.

my teeth
              are thick blocks
                                         of white.
that only seem to find pleasure in
interrupting my speech
and my smile.
they chatter while broken
      words
          and phrases
crawl hesitantly out of my mouth.
i carefully mold the definitions
and the
wrenching metaphors
into clay that’ll dry up in the sun, and
      drop
              like a pin.
and i feel my bones come together
in my state that i call my own
                  plucking
           my eyelashes off
clipping the idea of being full grown.

what i see
is a completely separate being
moving in the mirror.
i watch you spit toothpaste
into the sink
and cry off your makeup
that i saw you spend hours on
this morning.
i’m stuck
in a two-dimensional buzz
and i watch my body do the things
i should be doing every day.

god makes no mistakes, god circles your drain, god looks just like you.
god put his face in my hands, i dont want remember the questions i was asked.
i remember the heat of a church in august,
repeating scriptures as my knees ache against the **** carpet.
i learned that god doesnt pressure the sick ones, he only breaks beneath it. i am salvaging the consolation of knowing these things.
i cherish him with my fingernails,
and i shake like an exhausted child.
i am trying my best to shake this swirling from my mind.
hallowed be my breath my eyes my insides,
because i cant seem to stop believing in you so i am proving myself the only way i can.
flailing, wrecking, losing.

i’m not fond of being absent
i am actually quite tired
of saving a spot for my past self
in hopes that i’ve changed for the better

clutching onto ****** bedsheets,
i woke up in paralysis,
petrified by silence next to frequencies
repeating in my ears like a killer headache.
my body was stuck in a pale green buzz:
sickly and menacing and groggy.
i wanted nothing more than this,
for i had fallen ill,
and i could not escape it.
hands down my throat, mud in my lungs,
i blacked out underneath my shallow breath
decaying and dilapidated,
dying with every second.

cough syrup runs through my body,
taking the place of my blood
and settling like sand in my stomach.
if only you could see
my candy coated intestines
and the garbage in my bone marrow,
eating away at my body.
with wires and dirt and smoke,
i have destroyed this vessel,
only to wake up the next day
disturbed a little bit more.

thinking back to my days
of endless waiting—
time was a straight line
with jagged edges,
sharp and slender crowding images
made my head go
                  in my hands
and my arm reach over
     the bathroom cupboard.

blood peeking out cautiously
in a fragile line trapped on my skin.
looking down
           at what i had done
truly stung like the blur surrounding me.

the sky is a surface of flesh
         with clouds like bruises
                      spread throughout.
             at night, her freckles of stars
form constellations
                       that only
                                  she
                                     ever sees,
for she hides them like silver secrets  
that spike up from tongues unknowingly.
                               she wishes
                                    to be beautiful,
but the clouds cover her body
         and she’s drowning in the rain.

between murky gray undertones,
the day unfolds before me
like an old, yellow envelope
held in the creases of my palms.
washing my face in the gas station sink,
my stomach goes sour.
sitting idle in the repeating weeks,
i ask:
is this what i'm living for?
neutral toned sweatshirts and
bitter coffee that stains my teeth?
maybe i should stop asking.
after all, i am so incredibly tired.
i light my last cigarette,
and walk my last walk home.

underneath me,
i feel the creaking floorboards
snap at my heels
like they're trying to escape the resin they're trapped in,
and i remember where i am.
i think
after all the tears and sweat
and dirt and soap
and cardboard skin
that scratches at my arteries
every time i get out of bed,
where i am
might be the okay part of it.
and i might only think it for a moment,
but i wonder⁠—
maybe the bags
under my eyes
and the scars on my hips
and the calluses on my fingertips
aren't just a burden
that settles between me
and the opportunities
that cut
and bruise me
like a slam to concrete.
but above all,
i hope that this "okay"
is permanent.
and if not,
i'll believe it enough
for it to be true.

i hope the shallow pools of blood beneath my lungs stay there forever,
and i hope the gin soaked into
the lining of my stomach
sinks into my bloodstream one day and finally poisons me.
you planted dandelions in my throat
and watched them bloom through my skin
like bright yellow daggers,
you did nothing, i said nothing,
my skin is still covered in ****** patches of grief
and i wish so many things would've turned out differently.
but the pills just kept taking me
further and further away from whatever the **** i used to be
and i wonder if there was anything
that could cure the sugar-coated massacre
that's infected my bones and my brain and my skin.
i wish the liquor would've killed me sooner
but it didn't. and now
im stuck with the ache of sobriety
eating away at my intestines.

she's sitting right next to me
taking in the hospital smell
all over my clothing.
i pity her,
for i know it's so hard to be burdened by
another person's illness.
"i'm sorry," i tell her.
for the ***** on my bedsheets,
the poison in my blood,
and the errors in my brain.
the tobacco in my fingernails,
the rips in my skin,
the bullets in my torso.

i had a dream where i walked outside and it was the right kind of cold.
it was the kind of cold where you can take off your jacket and feel the air biting onto your flesh like sweatbeads in the summertime.
i looked down and i was 13 again when things were bad but not yet worse
and i realized the more i dissect my happiness the more devastated i will become.
and eventually i'll be a highschooler doing lines in bathroom stalls and drinking my dad's tequila
and nothing will feel the way it's supposed to.
my burnt fingertips will touch bodies and bottles and i will sit smelling of smoke,
and i'll only see two stars in the sky.
it won't be raining but i will feel water running down my back, soaking my clothing and the almost black dirt.
i woke up from my dream on the first day of the year and i sat in a hospital gown with the faint taste of blue raspberry on my teeth
and i wished i would've died a little sooner,
because tonight it's even colder and the stars are shrinking and i didn't give my body a chance to grow up before i did.
it's terrible that you don't regret it until it's eaten you whole.

i think i was born with my head in my hands or my stomach in knots or my shoes untied. i got sober before i turned 16 ; i sat with some largeness ; vacant cities living in between my ribs encasing fragments of things i can't remember for one reason or another. i mistake hunger for holiness i recite catholic hymns while i brush my teeth . how do i sleep in a warm bed knowing of the red wine stains on my sheets . how do i ignore the twists in my intestines how do i die without makeup on.. it feels like i never know anything these days.

only sometimes i find myself still punishing the same ill feeling, creeping up my back and around my spine. this is the kind of hindsight that sits on my shoulder and watches me breathe. how else do i get rid of my headache? i have been something of a promised wish, a shallow pool of sin in the very center of my body. and it feels like i'm buried alive, like there's thick mud clogging my throat, like i'm suffocating from some other sickness. what cannot fool me is what breaks me the most... what strikes me the hardest comes from far, far away.

when i answer your calls,
all i can hear is static.
and i wish i could change it,
but my brain was rewired
and now i'm unable to differentiate your sentences
from the background noise that only gets louder
and louder
      and louder.
i hope i can hear you clearly again,
but every pin pricking spiral
is buzzing on my skin
like the sound of static is infecting my body--
every phrase,
     every thought,
            every whisper
will end up blocked out while i'm blacked out,
repeating over and over
in a cycle of misunderstanding.

through water and soap,
i hope that one day
that shower floor won't feel familiar.
i hope that tracing the cracks in the tiles
with my fingers
won't feel like a filthy soliloquy.
i hope it won't feel
like a hymn i must keep to myself
and never let me leave my silent state
while dusty figurines
and sewer rats stare
as if i'm some crazy man on a subway
who won't stop yelling
about aliens or some ****.
but when it comes down to it,
i hope i can feel the water
run down my skin
without the memories
of the cold, hard tiles
beneath my feet.
and the lights will turn on
and i'll see everything the way it is
i'll be whatever i am
with water in my eyes
on my skin,
on my hands.

but the thing
that really blows
is that i know i'll tell them everything.
i'll never dare to say it,
but it'll leak from the seams of my palms,
sewn together with thread and fabric,
tracing shapes,
weaving in and out of insanity.
my mouth will shut
and my eyes will close
but i know in my bones,
i'll bleed
       bleed
           bleed.

i can't help but hold my breath,
because as i begin to trust the clear air,
my lungs only get blacker
                                       and blacker.

watery cardboard brown eyes
blink wearily as the subway doors close.
the lights flicker as those eyes shut--
knocked out cold
like the newspaper concrete underneath sneakers.

it hurts so bad
and i'm trying to fix it
but creeping up my throat is the ghost of myself
waiting for my body to drop like a ragdoll,
tumbling to the ground like i weigh nothing.
this demon has infected my bone marrow,
and my teeth are rotting in my gums.
who knew it would end like this?
fighting with myself
for control over this body
that has now grown to be meaningless--
rust in my bloodstream,
pills in my mouth,
nothing but a bother to the earth.

i’ve found out
missing the ground
is the same thing as missing the sky.
either way
i always feel out of place.
even when i wake up somewhere new,
i don’t feel refreshed.
i wish i could apologize—
i wish i could breathe again
without feeling guilty.
i hope the bitter taste
in the back of my throat
will go away someday.
but somehow,
no matter how much honey i swallow
it’s still there:
reminding me of how lost i really am.

it’s hard to write soliloquies
when you drive yourself mad

i stand, disoriented
in a drugstore parking lot
the sound of keys jingling
ringing in my ears
like a gunshot.
the car that followed us
all the way
down the road
is now gone.
probably somewhere sleeping
in the midst of midnight
as flickering library lights
with roaches inside of them
buzz like a melody,
repeating over
and over
and over.

i hope you finally get it someday
                                              and until then,
i will do everything in my power
to make you understand—
                                     or at least try to.
if i really wanted to,
i could morph the air around me
                                                into clay—
i could mold and manipulate it
to form the sharp, jagged words
that are yet to leave the tip
                        of my cowardly tongue.
i could push the words down your throat
and have you regurgitate them,
only for you to be put in my place,
to understand first hand.
but that would only make me into you—
so instead of doing what i can,

i sit in silence
                           and take in the judgement.

water trickles down my spine,
impossible fingers pressing into my skin.
i choke out sighs of defeat,
as the sharp drops of water     
pierce into me like tiny daggers—
knowing every little thing,
and using the knowledge to peel me apart.
the sky falls
and joins the shower drain
forever an aching reminder:
i will never be clean.