imagine running
but not just running
you're running like something evil is chasing after you
you can hear your heart pounding in your ear
you're running so hard you can't breathe

i've heard that's how it feels to **** yourself
that that's what it feels like to die

adrenaline flowing through your body
faster than light, faster than you're thinking
you feel it numbing your insides into oblivion.

sometimes I still get that feeling

i've heard you feel it pumping in your veins
viciously, like you're about to explode
i acknowledge that i'm screaming
only through my rib cage
you feel it rattling your every bone

i didn't know it would feel that way

like playing an old Nirvana song too loud
and about the person who said
they'd rather hurt than feel nothing at all -
whoever he or she or it is
they obviously didn't know the true bliss

the ecstasy of absolute nothingness.
the calming of feeling, no feeling at all
i've heard that's how it feels
well most of the time anyway
other than that, you are dead...

It dances in the darkened corners of galaxies,
sleeps amongst collections of brilliant stars.
Sways with the tug and push of merry tides
bringing sweet little shells for someone to find.

Ever patient awaiting its turn in the medleys of planets,
a persistent idea over the linear logic of time.
Its lashes are made of stardust and its aspirations bud with time,
it dreams of the waking world when all is still and silent,
stirs in ebony blankets,
willing the sunlight to dawn and sift to illuminate its opalescent
silhouette.

It skirts the boundaries of a seeking mind,
giving furtive glances of its outline
seducing a victim to fill in the lines.

A tool for an artists' oeuvre.

The smoke rises
and soon the stars in the sky look like coordinates
and you count the way each set of three makes a triangle.
This view makes you feel happy that you're still stuck in the suburbs
but then you begin to feel scared because you're still stuck in the suburbs
(maybe the view is better elsewhere)
I miss my best friend
and I know that if I lean over this balcony any further -  I'll be dead.
Suddenly you're glad you aren't dead.
and suddenly you're scared because you could be.

She was a heap
of tangled wires
on the floor of my bedroom;
I stayed up until four
in the morning
desperately trying
to pull her apart

She was a pile of sheets
all folded over herself
at the foot of my bed;
I stayed home all day
desperately trying
to unravel her

She was her sweatshirt
dripping crimson from
the sleeves,
She was the note she left
on my dresser,
She was the pills her doctor
prescribed her,
She was drawn curtains,
She was locked doors,
She was gone before I found her,
She was her diagnosis all along,
*She was never mine

when i was 13,
"if your friends jumped
off a cliff would you?"
was an effortless,
"no"
because when i was 13
the cliff was a tall,
intimidating
piece of land
with a neon sign that said
"impending doom"
lit up at the edge,
but now im 20
and the cliff
comes in glass bottles
and the cliff
comes in thick syringes
and the cliff
is drawn beneath
my skin
in india ink
and down below it,
i can see my home town
and i can hear the patient voices
of the kids i grew up with
that never got out,
shakily shouting
"come down here;
it's easier at the bottom"
and if im being honest
im stumbling toward it
with an alarming
lack of fear