if

the more i feel,
the more it hurts

and the more it hurts,
the more i feel

then do i keep feeling?

This train ride
Is the only thing that connects us now
It is the only thing left that’s running
From me to you
It is the only thing that’s still moving

For once I am back,
I am not leaving again
Once I am home
I am not leaving it behind

I made this mistake once
Of thinking I could have left
Everything that killed me
That tortured me and pursued me
All of the pain that subdued me
But escape isn’t possible for the thing
That is in me
You need to know, my love
Because I know, now
This pain created me

And I owe it to this pain to let it destroy me

See I am sitting and I can tell something isn’t right
This train moves too quick and the breaks seem too tight
And as a whole the train itself is shaking to be loose
And if this train tips over, there is nothing you or I can do

We have to let this happen
We have to let us die
I keep thinking of how many people are on here
With more valuable lives than mine

It’s not because I’m lonely
And it’s not because I’m me
It’s because even back in my small space there with you
I’m so insignificantly free

I’m going back
Because I realize this is all I’ve known
This feeling of being nothing
Makes it so much more plausible

Makes it so much easier to understand
I have lived this way forever
And it only makes sense
To go back to feel it there

It only makes sense
To leave you behind
Because if I take you with me
Then we’re both going to die

This train ride
Is the only thing that connects us now
These tracks that run through the one island we’re on
You are on my island, the island I’ve lived on my whole life
And there’s so much of it you haven’t seen
And there’s so little you know of me

Your entire life in a different state
Is my entire life with you here
Because although you have come to me
You know nothing of what I used to be

You know nothing of what I’ve done,
What I’ve become
Where I’m going
What I want
In this life that keeps insisting otherwise

I realize this train is my lifeline
Once it stops, the movie is over
The song is done
And there are no more wonders about
If we’ll ever be something

No more worrying
No more drinking
No more thinking of me
But never being open to talking

Maybe you don’t think of me
As much, I thought you did
I thought you would
I thought I could do it

I thought I could do this

This train ride
Is like my veins in my body
Like the alcohol that runs throughout his sitting next to me
I am looking away from him and pretending it is you, instead
I am pretending the smell
Is the taste and array of your breath
This is our connection
Watch it go, farther away

Watch it disappear
Watch it get smaller and smaller
Watch it move on to something other
Than what’s always been right here

Watch it sway, watch it crumble
This train is me
And I realize you’ll be sad
You didn’t get to see it leave

Once I am done,
I am not starting over again
Once I am here,
I am not ever leaving

Once I am alone,
I have pounded this road in, jack
Once I am home,
I am not coming back

You can have this city
If it means I get to breathe
If it means, I get to reconnect
With this other half of me

For twelve nights now
I've tried to see
How I can be so enjoying
And so fulfilling,
And yet so empty

I am both the entertainer
And the curtain drawer
The nail and the hammer
And yet I've never felt better
Being all of the ground under

I am safer and this feels normal
To live in the background like shadows
And I'm following you around
But I know you'll never catch me
Because it's simple, why would he

It's simple that, to you, I never am to be found
With all of this beauty that surrounds,
Why would you ever think or care to look down

Why would you ever even think to look at me
When I am so much of distortion and thorns
Rather than pretty petals and leaves
I'm more like the remains of a rose's corpse

I'm more like the broken branch on the tree,
I'm more like
The bottom of the sea
I'm more like everything other than anything
You had seen in me

I'm more like nothing
I'm less good at holding,
I'm more broken
I'm less alive, and—

I don't want to seem like
The demon of the night
But angels don't break like me
Angels save, angels love

I'm nothing but love that
Is never enough

So you can have this city
If it means I get to lay beneath it
If it means the water washes me
And there's no trace or a footprint

For over twelve nights now
I've tried to see
How I can be so enjoying
And so fulfilling,
And yet so empty

And so I'm going home
To be with family
To be in my room, with my ceiling fan
That knows just how mad I can be

I am safer and this feels normal
To know I could actually lock my own door
And these four walls have seen the way I've grown
And what I've kept inside me for so long
And it's simple, why would she

I've been doing this for eighteen
And it's simple what it means
Home is where I brew
And I will die here, too

I wish I were home
That way I could be alone
In my bed fit for one
And no bigger, rather
Just as I left it
It is only for me

I wish I were home
So I could not think about my mom
And how she doesn’t know
Her daughter is dying

I wish I were home
And I wouldn’t hear my roommate’s clothes slide off
From man hands that will never in this life
Reach to me

He is across the room in the bed next to me
And the four, 12-inch tiles between are a universe
And he does not see me
He does not know I am listening
And I hear what he’s doing and I’m crying—
Because I know, now
She is something I will never be

This is something I’ll never have
Just me and my bed
So much bigger than my one at home
How long do I sit here pretending I’m sleeping?

How long do I stay as the lives around me are collapsing?
How long do I keep trying?

Do I dare tell him, now
In this dark he cannot see me
That the sound of your tongue on her body
Makes me want to scream
Makes me want to throw myself up at the ceiling
Makes me want to leave

In my own room
In my own bed
It is only for me

And, God, I wish I were home
And I wish I were an angel
And I wish I were Calypso
And I wish he loved me,
So I wouldn’t have to lay here so quietly

But it’s never hit me harder than tonight,
That I am the dark tunnel
That drowns out the light

The people here don’t know who I am
They don’t know what I’ve been,
What I’ve done
They don’t know I can remember every single one

One of the times I felt dark
Had to do with feeling like I’m sinking and dying
And this is now
The worst night of my life
And I’m crying

This darkness is ruining me
It is grabbing me and subduing me
And I am going out like they do in movies
And the song is the sound of
Him ******* my roommate

And I wish, God, I wish
I wish I were home
That way I could be alone
In my bed fit for one
What a love story it is
******* the left gets fingered
And ******* the right writes a poem

And she will be alone for the record
She’s got them beat and she knows it
And the sleep medicine only has her more awake for the moment

And I hope you ******* liked it
I hope you had to grip the sheets so tightly
And I hope you had screamed so I could have pretended it was me
And I hope he’s gone by the time I wake up
So I don’t have to remember it
And I hope you’re gone
And I’m gone
And I know that soon I will be
Because this life is as unexciting and unfulfilling as can be

And I know, love, I’m stunning

I hear the fireworks break right next to me
And I don’t need you to think—
Because you’re not the one who will die from drowning
And you’re not the one who will feel so lonely
Who will feel like her favorite poet
Who suffocated herself with gas from an oven

And I can feel the heat
And it’s burning,
I can tell
In pain you see angels and I go through hell

But it’s never hit me harder than tonight,
And I’m sinking
And it’s dark again
I’m hearing singing and I know I’m going—
And good God, this life

This life is only for me

She says she loves him
Down to the bone in which she’ll begin to carve into
If she is like me
The bone that he grips tightly,
Making patterns of her skin
Whether spirals or mandalas

He touches her like she is weakened porcelain
A plastic doll that is only good for his use
And she lets him

She says she loves him
Because she wants so badly for him to be herself
And I won’t tell her she reminds me of 13 year old me
Who wanted so badly to feel like she deserved to breathe
Stripped confidence levels as low as the concrete
That younger me scraped her knees on
Never knowing that one day she would be the ground
And the thing that keeps cutting her now is me

He sleeps in her room at night
Then he leaves and forgets her and she pretends she does, too
She forgets herself
And I won’t tell her she reminds me of 15 year old me
Who snuck into his jeep,
Followed roads to his home
Then snuck into his bedroom
Then his basement when his mom came home

The way he treats her is the dirtiness I’d carry
The way he leaves her is the sound of the TV
That kept playing while I entertained him and he wouldn’t even watch me
The way this is normal for her
So she doesn’t fight
And I won’t tell her she reminds me of 16 year old me
Who made her body a home for anybody but the people who lived there
The way he uses her is how unnatural it felt
How it feels that he is the last one I remember
That he is the last one I touched in a November

The way he makes her think it is her who decides whether
They rest with eyes open together or not
The way he makes her believe it is her fault
It is her fault
And it is my fault

And it is our faults
That keep us nailed to crucifixes made of not wood
But pain and insecurity
Of being a woman loved solely for what makes us women
But if we were men, we’d be lonely
If we were men, we’d be nobodies

No bodies seem like they carry enough blood and warmth except his
And I won’t tell her she reminds me of 17 year old me
Who would rather change for him than let him accept me for me
Who let him tell me what I should do with my body
The way he calls her back in on some nights like a dog
Is the guilt I felt when I couldn’t please him
The way she is his one night stand, for more than one night
And never a friend
Is the deadness that sprung like tree roots when I found he’d been with her
That he’d be with her, from now on

She is lost in the way he has lost love for her
And I won’t tell her she reminds me of 18 year old me
Who let cages hold me instead of his palms and his cheek
His face and his hair that feels so feathery
That feels like what it should be
The way he makes her question herself is the times over and over again I refused
The spirals on her skin are the circles I have been running in
The way he traces them with his fingers to make her think she could get him to want her is how I became lost
Chasing him then chasing me then chasing something I couldn’t see
Chasing nothing
Chasing something I couldn’t be
And should never have been, a one night stand for more than one night
And never a friend
This is normal for me
The basement and the bedroom and November is where and when I breathe
Where I see myself falling in deep, maybe
Because he doesn’t deserve a mind this ugly

She says she loves him and it’s scary
Because I said I loved him
And I said I loved him
And I said I loved him
And I said I loved him

And I know she doesn’t mean it
And I know she thinks she means it
And I won’t tell her the way she doesn’t know her worth reminds me of me

I say I love him
The circles I’ve drawn are the reason I keep finding myself in the same position
The same spaces I keep walking in, getting deeper and deeper
Like the spirals on her skin

Yes, there are patterns to my pain
Periods webbed together like mandalas
That have all kept me caught

This is normal for me

And I say I love him
But I don’t want to catch him

And I feel sorry for her—
I’m sorry.

At the end of the night
Know I love you,

Even if us two aren't right.

I see you in my sleep
Entwined in blackened rhythms,
I see you standing right in front of me

Then darkness grabs you quick
And I am drowning in a black sea,
I see you in my dreams
Left thoughtless to images of stranger things

Is this what my mind imagines it to be like when you leave?

I see you when I sleep
When closed eyes leave no witness,
But always keep you right in front of me
And watch your life and body dissipate

Soon you are invisible
And I am drowning in a black sea,
I see you in my dreams
Listening to seraphine and metallic malaise

Whistles blowing sound like wind dancing through rain

This is where dark figures live
I dine with them as beasts
We dance at dusk together
And move on to grab each other
I let their hands move on my hips
And love the ways they grab my waist

Then darkness grabs us quick
And we are dancing in the black sea,
Swimming with our demons
And all of the men of my dreams

This is where dark figures eat
And quench the hungry beasts
I notice that they’re starving
And invite them to feed on me

Then darkness grabs me quick
And I am drowning in a black sea,
I look and he does not look at me
And I know, now, that I’m not sleeping