you never think the voices could scream
any louder than they do,
until your fingers trace the sides
of your dads loaded gun.
people told me to look up,
but your face always grinned below me.
so I laid with broken bones,
and I never learned how to stand.

there are more crumpled poems
mocking me at my desk
than there are thoughts in your head.
and there are more bullets in the gun,
than tears on my cheek.
tired hands cradled my face, and sad lips
told me that I was precious. strong.
but lonely eyes never peeked
at the stitches holding me together,
the ones you pulled to see if maybe
I could crack a little more, before I shatter.

you never think the voices could scream
any louder than they do,
until your brain is climbing up the wall,
and your blood leaks into carpet.
people told me to look up, but
my face was twisted in the water below.
so the waves swallowed my frame,
and I never learned how to swim.

sheets bind your legs
you're covered in white.
I watched you in battle,
and you lost the fight.

your skin's now a canvas.
scars. tubes in your arms.
the ache to be free will not
stop those alarms.

so you break from the bed,
trace lines on the wall.
eyes scan the room blankly,
on me, they don't fall.

my arms long to hold you,
I stick by the door.
I don't even flinch when
you fall to the floor.

the nurses are gone now,
but I couldn't yell,
when you slipped from the window
and laughed as you fell.

it wasn't the drugs.
dope, coke, or crack.
all you needed to live
was for me to come back.

their clocks tick. sure, his
is off-beat much like his life
and hers ticks along

sluggishly. o how
a heart can stumble into
another in the

most inopportune
manner! this doesn’t make sense,
she whispered that first

night, and he could do
no more than agree. this is
pointless, he rejoined,

and instead of that
expected sombre moment
they both just snorted.

death’s conventional
and the night is young, though their
days are old and mourn

for the loss of hope.
kiss, touch, ****, love. it’s enough
for two criminals.

there’s no rosetta stone to decipher the engravings on your bones, old as the core of the earth itself.
i trace my name onto your skin and
i breathe my heart into your mouth but you never want anything more than my hands further south and i
want you to be happy so i do
what i hate and i pray it’ll make you content
because when you cry i swear i hear the heavens crying too, the sun looks on as though it disapproves of us and i’m shaking enough as it is, darling
april is over and the drought has brought us nothing but weeds.

I wanted you to hit me, baby.
I wanted to fall to the floor and
                   think, numb, that this
                                     wasn't how
          it was meant to be.
I wanted to hear your skin
                   on mine,
         one more time
                                 before we die.
      I wanted to think that
you were a mistake, that
             I could have done so much
                                         better
                                              but you know
                                      and we both know
that's a **** lie.

      I had a list of platitudes
ready for the day that you
                     gave in, and I could
                               finally let go.
            Ours is a ferocious tenderness,
                        one that relies on
     your (brute) force
            and my twisted dreams
                                    of reddened skin
and bloodied knuckles.
        I wanted you to hit me, baby.
    See, I'd already forgiven you
but there's nothing between us
              save our lips
              save our bodies pressed
                         flush, one encompassing
                    the other,
              save the ice in your eyes
                                 and the typhoon in my
                        chest
                               that I think might be
                                              my heart.

              Save his soul, o my God.
        Bring him home and I
                            shall follow,
           with iron in my lungs (how do I
                     breathe
                                       alone?)
                and steel in my throat.

****, I wanted you to hit me.

i hope the bullet
that kissed your brain, dear
brother, was kinder to you
than i.

Black lungs, bright eyes.
You are my only addiction and I inhale you into
my blood
stream

.
Leave me in the wreckage and I
will sing of you forever. Take me with you and
I will only slit your throat.

I remember when it first started.

You kept the Wild Turkey under the sink, and I'm sure you knew I'd see it. You left all the time. "It's Date Night, we'll be back soon." you'd say, the case of beer already slurring the quiet words you spit at me.

And so I nodded, and turned away, and you walked out the door with your trophy girl connected to your waist. and I like to tell myself she was a much better woman than Mom will ever be.

It would usually be about 12 then, who knows where a couple needs to go at midnight. but I did not care. as long as you were gone.

I would slide the glass door open and step onto the porch, letting the air chill me to the bone. I savored the shaking and chills that the twenty degree air gave me. It was much better than the shivers I got hearing you take hundreds of pulls from hundreds of bottles.

When I walk back inside, your absence reminds me of when you would first disappear. I remember how it started then, too. First the bars, but you got bored of that real fast. So you locked yourself in the basement with a new bottle every night. Then the hospital bed.

But now, in the new apartment, you were perfectly fine with pretending none of that ever happened. but I knew that Jack and I, your only children, were just disgusting reminders of the life you tried to build with an insane woman.

And so I'd reach for the Wild Turkey, chasing away the thought of you, the sickness, the percosets, the new girlfriend, and the new feeling I'd just discovered. The worthless feeling that once I walked into the room, I was not wanted. I was now a burden.

And I've stayed a burden ever since then.

Wild Turkey and cheap white wine ran through my veins for the first time that winter. since then, we are best friends. I remember the first nights I would lose myself, invite my real "friends" over too, just in case.

They laughed, but I was drowning.

That's all I can use to describe it now. The Drowning. it is simply that. an inescapable emptiness and weight that pulls you into what you might call Hell.

But at first, I was completely happy with it. you, her, him...none of you were on my mind. only the flow of sweet music or the begging calls of lovely sleep.

And then, things changed.

The drinking became a need and not a release. I would do anything to feel the fuzz and the effect it gave me. I would drink most of the bottle and desperately fill it with water, hoping you wouldn't notice. (Did you? you never said a word.)

Wild Turkey, Cheap Red Wine, ****** White Wine, and bottles with labels I don't dare to read are my only friends now.

In two years time, the once lovely drag the ethanol gave me turns into nights filled with heavy rain, chain smoking, and puking all over my friends floor without recollecting a single moment.

Waking up in other people's clothes and feeling my body stay drained becomes a strange reality, and I wonder how things may have been different if I never touched the heavy bottles in the first place.

I am sixteen, and I feel as if I've lived a thousand years. and maybe the scariest thing is knowing that eventually I will have access to any bottle on the shelves.

And I don't know if I'll be able to resist grabbing every single one.