my ears are silent
—i repeat—
my ears are silent.
i choked myself today.

poured my ventricles
dry to fill atriums with acid;
my lungs asphyxiated,
i'm dead, i'm quiet

i did my time screaming
and now i'm numb,
i’m deaf and dumb,
i’m sorry you had to see it.

it’s a pen panic,
an ache addiction, and
i cried today, i screamed today,
i made no sense today, sensed
no harm i say, felt pain t
like oranges and oceans.
i stood up today and fell
up, over and sideways,
flew down to the sky
with its purple stargazers
blue cats, maroon hats,
scarlet doves diving away.
i loved today, like any day,
but today i made no
sense.

you gave me a bite of your lips
and it tasted orange, metal, tin
tingling and downy soft, like toes
against a backdrop of jagged snow
on a plain. you tasted like sweet
e flat on my skin, like smoking
all those marshmallows by the
corner of the roof, bright and burnt.
you tasted like ah, sighing,
you tasted of love.

i never knew that a heart could squeeze
this way or that way or sideways
or that it could ever feel so full
while being, at the same time,
completely empty.

i never knew that love could exhale
so sweetly, so sweet that a heart
could fly away and land in arms
that would patch it up and stitch it
together while it cried.

thread my heart through a needle
the size of your pretty words and
turn it around and double knot it;
i see it now: my life in an eye,
ah, sew it up, sew it up,
i don’t want to see this anymore.

hello. it’s been a while, hasn’t it?
i keep forgetting you exist—
pardon me, then again all offense—
but for some reason you stay
at the back of my head.

stop killing me within my chest.
i’m not a toy; you can’t take me
and break me
and hope for the best—
even though i’m probably better off dead.

and i can’t take you anywhere,
can i? you’re the blank spot,
the kettle (***?)
the pink elephant in the room.
no one likes you, so get out—

soon.

i have my whole story ahead of me.
i have to take the next step, build a life,
watch it fail (sorry, your influence
seems to prevail)
but survive. you can’t **** me.

(yeah, sorry, i know you can)

BUT YOU CANNOT CONSUME

(yeah, okay sorry, i’m sorry, i’m sorry—please,
don’t take me back to the emergency room)