As I burn
Your absence
With whiskey

Try not to tame the ashes
Pray the sky returns to its forgetful sleep

And as we head in that way
Where the sun has begun
to fall asleep

I wonder how your night went
If your dreams whispered of the sins
I laced in your heart
Or whether my blanket of thorns
kept you from breathing at all.

And as you ask about my hands
of why they smelt of blood ,
whiskey and guilt

*I laugh
I laugh at the silence.

But isn't life just a window you poke in and out of between daydreams?

And these sun-drenched ocean waves
nudge against sand-kissed finger tips
as they sigh into your feathers
of the agony
they were impaled with
and moan of flight

And somehow it feels like
My body is a house I cannot afford
Maybe 'cause of the location.
An entire world of possibilities,
Accessible to me with just a few steps
And yet, for some reason,
I cannot step past the front door.
I try to not forget
feel grateful
That when I turn on the lights
I become a part of a dream,
a part of a skyline
people want, people envy.
That living here is a privilege.
No matter how much it seems as if
these walls are begnining to fall apart
into nothingness
I pay my rent.
Earned with sweet late-night chatter and laughter
By painting Orange-pink sunsets on the drive back home
By lacing my fingers with no regrets, so tight,
to ever come undone.
And yet, gradually, price of my existence grows higher
Every single day with
Every tear shed
Every fight where I struggle to make amends
Every story I begin to write
and somehow cannot possibly imagine the end
And then
I somehow start to earn less and less
and my rent is unpaid, still due.
One day
A letter comes in the mail
saying my rent has been paid.
I have a roommate now!
Or maybe I always have.
I think I know him
I have seen that silhouette before
On the other end of the apartment inside my brain.
I am living with depression.
There’s no other way to put it.
He puts my walls up , repairs them
and makes everyone else stay out.
He tells me he’s the only one
who can stand these cramped rooms
It seems as if he's been spreading out
more and more with every passing single week.
I don't think there's any space left
for anything that I recognize as me
I have a roommate now
And he also makes my friend uncomfortable.
'cause when he’s around,
I can't seem to say much of anything
My voice stays almost mute
Maybe cause I don't wanna make him angry.
Don’t wanna hear what he’ll
shout when they all leave (and they always do)
I always try to leave.
Try to find other places with different rooms
Different beds
Different drinks,
Different meds,
Anything to simply forget
that I eventually have to stumble back to him.
I have to face him in the living room.
Listen to his words,
Hear his laughter all night.
Keeping me up.
I know
He wants me to move out.
Wants me to vacate this space, these walls
with no questions asked,
with none of my things packed.
I can tell
By the thin pink sketches he draws in my skin,
his plans to make his own bloodlines.
I can tell by the way he keeps handing me the knife.
I know he wants me to move out,
and someimes I do too.
I don’t know if there’s a difference anymore.

And it's not that
I can lay the blame
for my obsession at your door
For it was me
who draped your words
with added meaning
dangling the gossamer sheets
from the paltry phrases
that fell a little too carelessly
from your cursed mouth,
never guessing ,even once,
that they would wind up serving
as iron blinds
*for my caged soul

Slowly I am
wiping the mirrors
judging the subtle reality behind it
witnessing the frivolous frailties
And
Maybe
I finally can
let go of those years
Drowning in your sins
as mine
*Robbing me of my own home

Blue blots  adorn the page
Trembling ink falling from
trembling fingers
Don't you remember how to write?

There's a pause

Images soar wildly through your mind.
Like a firefly zipping inside a glass jar
Bouncing from memory to memory
Ultimately the light shines bright
The firefly reaches the top of the jar
But before it can escape
It burns out
Falls gracefully
On it's back.

You look down
And the blank canvas
*Screams of silence

Maybe you could wake me up and tell me it's just a bad dream

Because, how tragically ironic would it be
To end up dead because of an overdose
of the medication meant to help keep you alive.

Hey Jack
Are you there
there's a someone on my window
his eyes are red
His stare, kind of deadly
He said you, my own brother, doesn't love me
he said he's going to **** me
it's not true, right, Jack?
He's coming closer
Is he carrying a dagger
and he's about to get in
Help! Jack!
he's at my door
and he looks like you
Wait
Brother,
is that you?

And I'm scared
Cause falling into you
Means falling out of him
And somehow
*I had not prepared for that

And they couldn't help
But dance under the street lamps
To a melody
That maybe only too much alcohol could make you hear..
Swaying in each other's embrace
Careful not to spill their drinks
Hoping to listen to their song
A little longer

But aren't our minds sometimes
like dead dandelions?

Delicate
Fragile

*And all it takes
is a breath
to lose them

And in between all that we baptized this meadow with our lust and ****** it with our love

But weren't we vandals in the end,
drowning ourselves with kerosene
with a desire
that our chaos
*would set the world on fire ?

A Forged smile,
Half-dried eyes,
Covering Slitted wrists,
Ignoring contused thighs,
Those oh-so-innocent pills,
Just a loose rope tied,
Keep the gun loaded
                                                                                  
Suicide.

And somewhere I was so stuck with my own little problems
That I somehow missed you were suicidal too

A tune played somewhere
In a place where I had hoped we existed
Maybe somewhere away
from the city lights,
somewhere away from these faces
faces that break the illusion

Surrounded by salty air
The waves teasing our souls
You head nestled on my lap
A small smile playing on your lips

Engulfed in that tune
that’s all we were
Existing only then
A place where the clock forgot to tick
A place where maybe existed..

And in between all that,
we broke bread and burned our bridges with break-neck speed , just so that we wouldn't remember the cost of *resentment

Smoke gathers in the air,
Blending with the fog of this dreary night.
Breathing in the chemicals I know will **** me,
but who cares? Not me.

Desolate, with a bottle in my hand,
Taking in yet another swig.
My senses, they have all gone numb.
But who's judging? Not me.

Taking them inside to lay me down,
A forged promise to never to see him again.
Emotions aren't anywhere to be seen.
But who's **** shaming? Not me.

Vices . That's all who we are.
Embracing them with all the risks.
Monitoring my actions, now that's obscene.
*But who's changing? Not me.

~ Why don't you arrange you heart just so,
when the company comes for tea,
those whiskey stains are forgotten,
if but for a little while.... ~

~ Baby just give me a little scrap of paper and maybe a feeling of what it's like to love you, and I'll pen down my eulogy ~

And this backdrop of a battlefield
is set in this parasitic wilderness
My unabated whimpers for attention
harvested and blown away
just like that,
into the wind,
chaff-like,
Swept into the nooks of
empty harvest homes
reeking of dead moss and tired stones,
nothing left to drink
except for
what I have sown

And all our days singe together like cigarette smoke and white roses...feels disgusting in a beautiful way

You stood below the canopy
of bleached driftwood
and steep rocks.
The sun warming
you numb , pale skin
and
sparkling in the streams
of whirling sand
beside your feet.
The air was crisp
and as sharp as your
memory....
*There's just something about
loss and love that stings...
in the salty ocean

And as the skies turn murkier
Ballads
from the eighties
flow from a distant land
And for a moment
It reminds me of *you

Tell me somehow , I earned it.
Tell me how my dress was asking for it -
Please explain how that Sunday it was okay for the church
Yet this Friday night it was way too "slutty".
Explain me how my eyes don't deserve to cry -
But also tell me , how it was their radiance
That drew him from the shades.
You can tell my smile not to return -
But explain how it betrayed me,
Made this villain justify that I was a friend.
Go on, tell my thighs to "get over it" -
Explain how these bruises are beautiful reminders
Of how much I "wanted" it.
Go tell my voice it is answerable -
Explain why not being able to scream is consent,
Ask how easily it left me when I much needed it.
Please tell my body it shouldn't have gotten so weak -
How not being able to handle that drink
Made this justified, made me an easy game.
But please, most importantly ,look at my eyes -
Learn how he destroyed me
And then tell me I was "asking for it".

But don't let him write his charm all over your body ;
you'll become another finished notebook,
an already scribbled in journal,
a prescription for madness he paraded around as *love

And it's almost as if
I am an inmate of a hostile commotion
and you
are the visiting  hours
opening  from 3 to 4
always leaving me wanting more
hung in a noose of uncertainity
behind that barbed wire fence

The seconds tick by
the days pass like wildfire
across the dried forests,
spitting eternal sparks
up towards the summer skies.
And underneath it all,

a tempest lies,
all unbridled passions
get wasted away
without any falling stars
to catch them.

you will search for her in every new rose you pick, That's the way of the wildflower,they ruin it for the rest.

Your sharp edges are all I need to make a dull life scarred by my best mistakes

And in the end,
we hung like a chandelier in a desolate church
****** in very way
cursed to have our lights burn for no one

Cause darling when I'm with you, even my demons get ready for dinner and *behave

And all your days singe together like a symphony of cigarette smoke and sadness; feels disgusting in a beautiful way

Almost thirty-seven hundred miles
pressed like stubborn blossoms
between the last time I kissed you and tonight
**And yet, you still feel like a sound caught in my throat

Your veins flowed with pure poetry and I stole the words from your mouth with my *kisses

And as the glass gets emptied , it begins to fill up with all the things I want to say to *you

But we were a melting *** of sinful righteousness that prayer never seemed to *fix

And so I exist here, in your shadows, for I am afraid that the sun will expose my **frailties

Cause the past is an armor you cannot take off no matter how many times they tell you the war is over

[Opening]
I play dark, you play light
Your move towards me, a pre-destined sign
I want your heart, I gave you mine
But my gambit, you decline.
[Middlegame]
Your pieces out, a closed defense
But I can tell, you mean "yes"
My royal pin, you reject
So I keep you, in a constant check
[Endgame]
I had played the perfect game
My forcing moves you couldn't escape
But your hidden queen, comes into play
You stands your ground, stare me down, and state:
Checkmate.

You're always closing your eyes , almost as if it hurts to look at things.

Nestled in a cozy booth,
Careful latte sips,
Soulless black eyes,
Sheltered by those tortoiseshell frames,
Entranced with some battered book.
And here I sit parallel,
Fiddling with a long cold coffee cup,
Pretending to not be falling for you

I am not obsessed, alright?
Obsession is an *understatement

The sky ,a shade of your angry eyes
With the flawed illusion of gray
The kind that reminds you of agony
The kind that never goes away.
Citadels high , asphalt laid down
Playing as concrete masks
Wallflowers hide as wallflowers do
From people walking past.
Never do the colors floss
Your trench coats and skirts, all the same
Does ever a person pass
Who knows more than your name?
For wallflowers hide as wallflowers do
From all those undignifies stares
Elegantly growing like ivy on brick
Always knowing, always there.

The night draws in , closer
the canvas turning into the darkest blue
and here, we keel over in this fear,
the lanterns are lit but darling,
the darkness conquers
our breaths curl like smoke, into the heavens,
we disappear;
diminished  to nicotine-scented memories
the little details lost and so long forgotten