alcohol in excess
and a daily overdose of pills
it's easier
than when choking on your tongue becomes a reminder
of the ghost who shook you out of it at night
so you laced those bitter remedies together
to go follow her spectre
while slurring all the words from all your favorite songs
brazen as ever

would it be too late to ask if i joined you
would it be too much to beg
put on my favorite record  
cut the failure out of my veins

can i put a last breath into words
and can i just as gently release it without the strain on my neck
i didn't ask to fall apart so young
but i'll take what i can get
adorned with dirt and laced with regret
metallic taste that lingers from one word to the next
words that overstay and overstep
and get harder to understand with every second

when i'm dead they'll hold a funeral for a boy who never existed
for a "man" who they projected
onto the body they'll burn in lieu of proper payment
for a burial that would have finally let me rest

touch me and i'll bleed your love is poison to me and so i'm poison to everything the cancer within every single foundation to ever embrace this hardened skin that when i feel an itch i dig my nails so deep down to the inch and leave this ****** mess just so i can feel it the nagging itch of your caress my aching need to feel to reciprocate it
tearing into my own flesh every time we lay in bed the only way i'm allowed to love
is through the wound i carved through my own skin ineed to leave to hide to run to flee to heal the pain is here i can't escape i can't replace i can't release i can'tbelievei can'tbeginagain

dear, i fear, a sickness spread while we laid requited in bed

and love, just can’t look you in the eye

pretty sure I’d turn to stone, or die

my tachycardia’s starting to catch flames from these ruminations
and the flowers i bought have gotten soggy in my hesitation

because what good are hands that hold if all they do is shake
and what good are flowers if they’re held so insecure
in a cracked and fractured vase

if i had endless time to spend
i would seldom spend it with you
i'd spend most of it thinking about you, and how good it feels
to not be wasting your time
i'd do nothing but talk about you to anyone who would listen, and listen to songs that commemorate
sparse moments where i felt perfectly secure
those moments where i walked out of your home
knowing that i broke nothing you owned,
and felt good about the words that i chose
to so carefully avoid the smallest of cracks
and keep our love intact


because every second spent with you is another chance you might see how worthless i am
and i dread every minute that i am caught
in your perfection

strategically submerge my brain in endless hours of mindless entertainment
japanese wrestling matches and youtube documentaries about the cruelest of fates

still when i fall asleep, the one and only thing that i will dream about is you

do you remember me

probably not
i never became anything

nothing more than suffocating, dissociative daydreams
surrounded by green leaves on lemon trees
i still could not thrive
amidst the accommodating salt air
still fading,
still weak
living on figurative life support all of my teens, now at twenty-three
decaying in one room, with one window looking out to an alley

can i even say i've changed

as romantic as it would be to say yes, and for the worse
i'm still not "me"

i do not even get the luxury of claiming i was once something before i turned into nothing

i remember claiming that i was trying to "be art"
in hopes that being an abstract museum of things you could see, but couldn't touch would somehow save me
but that is no way to feel
no way to be

i am no poem,
i am no painting,
i am no line i am no iris i am no olly

i am nothing