I will write my secrets upon petals
and rip them up, bury the shreds
in the hallows of my ribs, and ****
your seeds of doubt in the process.
I will sleep till spring, so that when
I awake, maybe something besides
trouble will finally
bloom. Its heavy, my skin
soaked with stress
the nerves in my spine have electrified
and now my lungs are smoking
and crackling like a burnt fuse
and my heart ticks down
to the explosion.

Swinging in sync with the sunrise, your hair
becomes tangled with the clouds.
Grab a fistful of sunlight
and kick the top of the snowglobe sky
until the whole world can hear
your glass shattering joy.
But the thrill of free falling to the dirt
ground while skipping the burn of the crash
developed a dangerous mentality.
You practiced falling faster than shooting stars
above, like you were a lost rocket
not knowing what planet was your destination,
but sweating tears to get away from
childhood.
Mutiny of the mind and now you're trapped
in a new dimension of adulthood and reality.
Everything is strange and foreign and as you declare
that this wasn't your original mission
you realize that life is a one way mirror
and there's only death on the other side
to interrogate you. The sky is the same hue but the rain
falls colder and harsher and you no longer try
to catch the droplets on your tongue. You begin
to accept that tragedies and fairytales taste
the same, because stories can only have one ending.

As breakable as plastic wrap, one little slit
and out come my pink guts and colourful secrets
until it all pools at my feet, like some gruesome
flooded garden with rotting zombie flowers. But at least
it forces you to have nothing to hide, no more hidden skeletons
in this closet of a body, where I hang half-whispered dreams
in the hopes that one day, one year, I'll finally have the chance to put
them on for size. If you have transparent skin, too
you may realize that you've never felt this light before. Don't be alarmed,
the important parts inside you will regrow (a heart,
a soul, a spirit) and you can finally discard the things
you never really needed before (a conscience). You may
be falling apart at the seems. You may not know where your insides
end and your outsides begin, and you may inexplicably find
your heart duck taped to your sleeve in an attempt to
hold you together. But now that my truth has finally been exposed
to the air around me, I finally feel clean.

I will base our relationship
on what the stars say
because I have nothing else to go on.
It's all eggshells dipped in lighter fluid
with us, hot blood, ping pong pupils
that never know when to rest. When
we enter the same room I swear
I see sparks ignight in the static air.
There's blood behind our words
but I don't know if it was spilt in vain
or if this is all part of our story to the road
of forgiveness. Maybe I'm crazy
but I just want to take your hand
and make you agree that we are
both unwarranted.

Most days self-doubt laps at my ankles
in pools that I hardly feel, with ripple effects
so small I don't even sift the footprints
in the sand. Other times it comes in waves,
striking me behind the knees. I wobble,
skim the water's surface with a grasping hand
that's never held on to anything except for broken
secrets, but I don't fall. The salt stings my eyes
but instead of closing them I resolutely
gaze at the sunset in the hopes that I could find
some written metaphor in the pink and orange clouds
about something like "starting over" or
"self-forgiveness". And then there are rare days
when there's an eclipse and I can't blind myself
with sunbeams or use an ultraviolet floodlight in my brain
to scare off all the lurking thoughts I can't pin-point
but know are there... that's when the self-doubt
comes in tsunami waves, and I don't fall but
sink like a wayward torpedo, farther than
any reaching hand could pull me
to shore, to normal rock bottom,
and I realize, as the oxygen slowly leaves my lungs,
as my vision darkens into obscurity,
that I've visited this abyss before.

I've been stung by a wasp on the same part of my heart
so many times that this familiar
disappointment shouldn't hurt anymore.
Gardeners develop callouses on their hands
because nurturing others to life with love
is the hardest thing they will ever do.
I can show you the rough patch of tissue
and muscle, right on the epicardium; I've cut myself open
time and again for others to peer inside, that it has
become automatic, synchronized with each beat
and thump. I don't know how to become close
to people without bleeding for them, but none
yet have been able to withstand the sight of
a brilliant crimson geyser showering
from my chest. If day after day I continue getting stung,
suffering like Prometheus when the eagle tore at his liver,
I know that I'll get rescued like him, too. Only I won't
be looking out for Heracles and a centaur- just a person
with open, calloused hands.