I wouldn't say my demons are my friends.
I don't invite them to parties or
look for them in the mirror.

But tormenting has become natural, second nature,
me.
And after a long day in the sun,
I always return to their ragged claws and ***** paws.

They scratch at my skin until I bleed and cannot sleep.
Scars cover my body but what...what would I be without them?
How could I dare spend a night without dragging nails across my throat?

They are not my friends.

But I listen anyways for the tapings behind the wall.
But I don't nurse my wounds.
But I don't fight the when they reach out.
But I like the color of my blood.

My demons aren't my friends, but neither am I.

Destroy me softly in the dead of night.
Rip apart my thoughts with gentle words
and steady hands.

Do not question yourself,
I promise not to protest in return.

Ask me where my words are hidden,
how I bury them
and dig to them without pause so that my muscles won't have time to push you back.

Unearth my dreams,
ransack my heart until we are both covered in blood and truth.

I don't care how much it hurts,
turn my mind inside out and
force
every
thought into your palms.

Pry open those rusty hinges
because heaven knows I am just as clueless as you are to what lies behind them.

And I know, I know, I know
that what is underneath my skin is raw and pink.

Tell me how it tastes.

When it's dark in the city,
I like to take off my glasses so that everything blurs together
And I can't tell where the lines start and end.

It's like the world becomes a painting,
One with globs of oil coming off the canvas
And you can make it look like anything you want it to be. 


And if I twist my neck around, 
I can see everything that I can imagine.
Like one where someone is in love with me and if I don't want blood under my tongue, 
There doesn't have to be.

One where I can walk surely and I don't have to take off my glasses to feel safe.


I can touch the halos around the street lamps with my fingertips because of the peaks of paint and I can sleep at night because of the dark sky. 
Sometimes you are there and sometimes I am alone and the same painting can mean a million things.

A million beautiful things if I let it.

I'm terrified to say it out loud to say that I have fallen for your deep eyes and deeper thoughts.
Because I know that you can never hold onto me.
I know that something in my soul
will never let me rest.

I am pushed forward
away towards anything and everything.

You haven't noticed, love, that my heart doesn't stay one place for long?You haven't noticed, darling,that there is too much air in my veins,
pulling me off of the ground,
away from more than a few short moments?

I'm terrified to say that you can stay until the sun rises
because once you start seeing me next to you in a messy bed,
it will be impossible to not see me there
even after months have passed.

Have you not noticed, love,
that I don't plant roots?
That I can't hold onto much more than
a photograph and a dream?
That I can't help myself from becoming something new every **** second?
That one day, maybe soon,
I will pack up my bags and leave before you have opened your eyes in the morning and I will be gone.

On to the next life.
Not because I have to, because I carry my heart in my legs,
not in the ground.

You say I am a sunflower.
Yours to keep, yours to kiss and hold up to the daylight.

Don't you know, sweetheart,
that sunflowers only last a few months?

I've never been kissed so gently
so purposefully
as if the world depended on your lips      
and my skin.

I'm not sure what you see
maybe a flower with thin petals you don't want to rip,
maybe a face of porcelain you don't want to scratch,
maybe a healing heart you don't want to bruise.

I've never been kissed so softly,so cautiously,like you are somehow made of shattered glass
and are careful not to cut my skin
just because you are broken.

As if you don't see the scars and burns
that already pepper my heart,
as if I'm the fragile one,
     thin and feeble,
small and unreachable as if there is a chance I could melt into the ground
if you hold too tight,

and maybe there is a chance I will.

It seems like you map out the placement,
like stars making a curious pattern in the sky,
beyond either of our reaches.

I've never been kissed so delicately,so deliberately
like the winds at midnight across the ocean,
powerful and moving,
soft and caressing.

As if I'm a gem you have been searching for,
blood red,
milky,
uncut
and you don't want to snag your lips on my edges,
or maybe you don't want to scratch the surface.

I'm not sure I will ever know.