I love watching flowers
Growing up through cracked pavement
And abandoned buildings
Crumbling, but somehow still standing
Held together by vines and moss
Cracked seashells worn smooth by the waves
And well loved jeans with fraying edges
Shards of glass scattered on roadways
Reflecting the sunset
And rusty keys, whose locks have long since ceased to exist

I'm trying so hard to learn to love myself
And the first step is accepting
That even broken things can be beautiful

I thought you were a shooting star
But you were just a plane
My wishes were wasted on you

you're pretty sure that the veins in your body
look like a roadmap of West Virginia
even though you've only ever seen its welcome center
I mean
that's fair
you're also unfamiliar with yourself
maybe you're just seeing maps in everything around you
because you keep telling yourself that you'll leave
and you're waiting for a sign
those runs in your tights look like highways
the lines on your palms could be exit ramps
and maybe if you pretend these are divine messages
you'll finally get out
because if you don't soon
you might never leave
and in 20 years you'll look in the mirror and think
"what the hell am I doing?"
and your reflection will respond,
simply,
"nothing"

I love deeply
But never in the right way
Please don't depend on me much
I never learned how to stay
I just need to know that
You will be okay

I'm sad about what could have been
But not about what was

Maybe I did feel something
But I don't think it was love

I miss the times you felt like home
Though they were few and far

Perhaps there is a difference
Between what was there
And what I saw

I stay up late writing ****** poems
You wake up with the dawn

We're night and day
We're sun and rain

It's just the way we are

And maybe to think
We'd work together
Was taking things too far

I gave up my voice
To make you happy
Maybe if I'm silent
I can pretend nothing's wrong

"You're such a fish out of water"
You say
"No one else would want you"
I believe

I used to love singing
Until you told me my voice was flat
I keep my mouth closed these days
"Silence is fine," I tell myself

I used to take walks on the beach
When I was young
That's where we met

I haven't been to the beach in a while
Now, for some reason,
The smell of the salt air
Makes my stomach turn
And the sound of the waves
Makes me flinch

It's fine, though.
Everything's fine.

The darkness has swallowed
All hope for reprieve
My heart beats are hollow
My confidence leaves
And though they know that I wallow
And they know that I grieve
Their darkness has swallowed
My hopes for reprieve

The monsters are coming
To take me away
I know they are waiting
I know where they stay
And the sunlight is waning
The day fades away
And the monsters are coming
To take me away

My debt must be paid now
It’s long overdue
I do not care how
As long as it’s soon
If my life I must lay down
I’ll leave it with you
For my debt must be paid now
It’s long overdue

You were so trusting
Your heart was so pure
Your dreams were of wedding rings
You knew I was yours
And I heard your soul sing
But I messed up the chords
But still you were trusting
And our love was pure

You never suspected
What I was inside
Because I had perfected
My tactful lies
Or cause you resurrected
My human side
So you never suspected
The monster inside

That night I remember
It’s painfully clear
Your pain like an ember
To burn and to sear
Your soul like November
Cold and dark with fear
Yes, that night I remember
It’s painfully clear

Your scream like a siren
Beckoned to me
You didn’t know I was the tyrant
That I was the banshee
I had the strength of a lion
But lacked sympathy
So your scream, like a siren
Appealed to me

All the love we had shared
Our life of fairy dust
Had I really cared?
Or was it blood lust?
Were your instincts impaired?
Or were they just?
Had the love we had shared
Dissolved into dust?

I don’t know, I confess
My emotions have dulled
But since your death
I can not be consoled
And though I took your last breathe
My misery unfolds
But ah, I digress
My soul has grown cold

My time has now come
I hear the footsteps
This means little to some
But I’ll try my best
Because where they come from
Those dark, soulless depths
Will soon be my home
Once you steal my last breathes

For now apart
Forever together
My soul belongs to you
Please come to claim it soon

my life is spent in toil

creating
constructing
perfecting

a mask

it looks much like my own face
but when i glimpse it in the mirror
i see a stranger

at night when i should be sleeping
i am at work
molding it
adding layers of paper mâché
and slathering it
in the sordid tones
of concrete
and plastic
and smoke

camouflage
befitting of a world
created in brimstone
and gasoline fires

it is grey
it is sullen
and it is nearly perfect

this is the face that people see
who i'm expected to be
but it is not the real me

I miss having shoulders
a right angle of skin and bone
nothing more
nothing less
I miss having shoulders
because it seems at some point I outgrew them
at some point my shoulders became an invitation
a ***** secret
a temptation
they teach us this in school
you can't show too much shoulder
lest some boy become too tempted
and I always scoffed at this
what is so ****** about a shoulder?
but then why is it that I feel so violated
when a man twice my size decides
this right angle of skin and bone
is his
to ******
roughly
as he whispers in my ear
why is it that I feel so defeated
when I yet again feel a man's hands on my body
uninvited
probing
trying to find something ******
about a right angle of skin and bone
why is it that even when I am fully clothed
men still feel entitled to touch me

I thought if I followed the two inch strap rule I was safe

Take away my metaphors
Confiscate my words
Demolish my carefully constructed sentences
Cart me off to rehab
I'm thinking too much
I'm talking too much
"You need not say these things"
They say
And maybe they're right
Pump me full of sedatives
And leave me
In a pile of broken ideas
They were never meant to get out

You're using me as a crutch
But I'm broken too

I could never stop the fall
I'm going down with you

You're the Titanic
And I'm the crew

Like a jumper
Without a chute

Or an ensemble
Without a flute

Deeper and deeper
Like roots

I don't know
What to do

I'm drowning
With you

I think we both
Always knew
This would happen

I lied when I said
That I didn't understand smoking
And when I told my dad
That I probably wouldn't drink much
After I turned 21

I keep a book of matches
Under my pillow
And a bottle of *** behind my bed
There's nothing wrong
With a couple of
White Lies

There are things crawling inside my brain
And they have claws
I can feel them
Scraping
Scraping
Scraping
With their nails
And with their teeth
-Always pain-
I feel them crawling around
And all I want to do
Is tear at my skull
And get them out
I try
I try so hard
But never succeed
There are things crawling inside my brain
And I think they're driving me insane

How many times
Have we likened the rain
To a Baptism?

I don't have an answer
But last time it rained
I stood outside
And let the drops slide down my face
Until my makeup ran
But I don't feel cleansed

Maybe the rain knows that I'm not Christian

I prefer my nights to be cool and breezy
And my air to be musty and swirled with smoke
And for there to be concrete under my feet
Graffiti and band stickers
Echoes of the permanence I was never comfortable with
In myself
Everything worn and broken
And I like it that way
I feel at home
My mistakes aren't as loud as the music
So no one really cares
In this place
Anonymity is a choice
Not a curse

Can I have one more kiss?*

He didn't wait for an answer
And when he pulled back
I felt a heaviness in my lungs
Breathless
Breathless
There was no rush of exhilaration
Just the sense that I could be drowning
I cried in the car on my way home
Wishing to expel the seas from my lungs
The saltwater drew paths down my cheeks
Onto my mouth
And though I thought that might cleanse them
I felt the whisper of another's lips on them
For the rest of the night

I smell salt whenever I think of you now

The freckles across your pale skin
Are like a negative image
Of constellations in the night sky

I never thought about
Becoming an astronaut
Until I met you

I self medicate by listening to old punk music
Maybe a little too loud
And throwing myself into my schoolwork
To feel some sense of accomplishment
By buying too many lipsticks
In the approximate same dark purple shade
And living inside of fantasy novels
And sometimes I self medicate
By hiding the empty bottles behind my bed
So I don't have to look at them
Because I know they didn't make anything better

All I want to do
Is lay with you
In the light of the moon
As it paints you in hues
Of purple and blue