I felt it in my bones that night
The pangs to run away
The chirping birds, at 5 am
They begged me not to stay
So starry-eyed, so heavy-tongued
So trapped within my head
I’d fought and flailed and torn my sheets
Set fire to my bed
My frenzied heart is leaping flames
Too hot to keep inside
I packed my bags alone that night
As cold as if I’d died
How did I even find this place?
My discipline was stern
I lost myself in wild touch
Dumb Girl, you’ll never learn
Frenetic and delirious
Thank God, the road is long
When I am miles away from here
You’ll tell me I was wrong
You’ll tell me to spit out my words
When mouth and throat are dry
Demand I clip my claws and wings
When I was meant to fly
I feel so small here, feel like I
Can hardly fill my lungs
Lassoed by the circles danced out
By our weary tongues
I’d stood like Aphrodite once
Before you, proud and bare
But now I’m mortal once again
I fear my heart will tear
I cried myself so worthless
And I tired of the sound
Exhaustion sapping all my strength
Stuck, muted, on the ground
My feet are itching yet to trace
The highway’s wandering curve
Don’t call me back, don’t yell my name
I swear I’ll lose my nerve
I’m fraying and I’m scattered
And I’m running, sprinting blind
I don’t want to face this darkness
And I don’t care what I find

There is fire in my stride
Wild, leaping, roaring flames
That melt the road before me
And leave smoldering ash behind

The war path, as it were
My screaming line of fury
Bending light waves and sound waves and distorting the world
With smoke and tremors and pure, searing heat

I run at a steady 6500 Fahrenheit
Past boiling
Past scorching
Past melting all your atoms ‘til you’re elemental sludge
There’s no surviving this
So don’t touch me
For I swear I’ll tie you to my side and burn you with me

There are explosions in my trembling hands
Volatile, unstoppable chemical reactions
Fuel to the fire, as it were
To shake the floor where you stand
Until you’re trembling on your knees

I am a lighting strike
Swift and bright and too much for your stuttering heart
Ruthless and ravaging
And merciless as a starving predator

Run fast, or you’re done for
I won’t leave anything behind
No embers
No coals
Not even soot to mark where you’d stood
Before you brought this blaze to life

There is fire in my stride
And you, sir, are flammable

I am the frayed end of a string
At wit’s end and unraveling
Afraid of sleeping in an empty bed
With a frenzied heart that beats too red
And an anxious mind that won’t hold still
No rest tonight; my head is ill

The skies are always gray it seems
Winter-bleak and dark
No sun to see for miles around
The skyline ever stark
Hopelessness has a cobwebby cling
A sticky sort of shroud
That wraps and traps and weighs me down
A dank and heavy cloud
Wound up like a spider’s prey
Feeling ever small
Shoulders hunched, spine curled in
How can one stand up tall?

Sometimes I think we are orbiting each other
Lost in space
Floating in tandem
Locked by gravity in the emptiness
And sometimes
I know that’s nonsense
And that you are the asteroid
Who will knock me into the sun

Still
I must admit
The heat felt good for once

These are the days
When the ichor in my veins
Transmutes from ethereal to acrid
When the fire in my stride
Burns too hot for human skin
When the tangle of all I am
Becomes unbearable asphyxia  
But I find
I cannot
Cast myself away

There is homework strewn about,
Stray pencils and rampant equations,
And he is next to me with a guitar,
Hair wild,
Fluid mechanics tossed aside for
Metal strings and quivering notes.
Neither makes much sense to me.
I played violin for seven years,
But I never learned to command
Music;
Keys and sharps and flats
Just told me where to put my fingers,
But to him
They tell stories.
They leap and prance and laugh from his hands—
Eyes closed,
He holds them.
This is home for him,
Away from stubborn assignments
And looming futures,
And just when I suspect that he is someplace I can’t follow,
He turns and smiles.

Sometimes I play the strangest games with my head
And get sick with memories
And wish for a vacuum-existence in only present tense,
Because my present tense is so much prettier
Than clingy yesterdays and chancy tomorrows.
My present tense is full of music,
Soaring, brilliant, beautiful music,
And the musician who strums away my relentless anxiety.
It makes no sense to me,
But that doesn’t matter
Because for now,
I’m in a place where moments pass in a time signature,
Strung together by his careful hands
And brought to life by his enamored gaze.

It is in this way that I have come to believe
That everything will be ok after all.

These are the dizzy days, my dear
The times of tired eyes
The ills of an insomniac
Have made a strong reprise
With tunes of troubled restlessness
And dreamless, desperate sighs
This messy, migraine-ridden mind
So hopelessly complies
Meets all demands of moonlit hours
And city’s starless skies
Awake until the dawning day
Requires it to rise

A weary head is much too weak
Though wears a stronger guise
But cannot bluff itself to sleep
Though desperately it tries
Attempts to teach its tumbling thoughts
That they must not surmise
For guessing games are only good
At weaving pretty lies
And working up a mass of worries
To leave me to despise
This problem path that only leads
To peace of mind’s demise

These are the dizzy days, my dear
The times of hopeless sighs
The ills of an insomniac
Should come as no surprise
Not bed nor sheets nor pillows soft
Nor soothing lullabies
Can quiet all the quaking thoughts
Behind these tired eyes
The messes made of sleepless nights
Will make no rushed goodbyes
Will send me stumbling on and on
Until the mind’s demise

My first word was “scared”
Not because it was taught to me
But because it was all
I knew
I was taught the word
“Emaciated”
But I wasn’t told what it meant
I just knew
Because it was all
I was
I learned to count
By counting the ribs through
My starved skin
While they were counting guns
Ammunition…

This world is frightening
And I’ve been thrown in
And no one cares
All they can do
Is run headlines of poor Darfur
On TVs of people who don’t watch…

After I finished counting my ribs
I counted each relative who died
I couldn’t count high enough
And I lost track
And then when I finally died
All they did was post my picture
On the internet
While the ones who killed me run free
Counting their ammunition
But never the targets they hit

There was once a time
When I had my every moment
Pinpointed
Down to the very last millisecond
And I organized every
Scene
Memory
Idea
Emotion
Each neatly labeled, color-coded
Stored away in its shrink-wrap
So that I’d hear it
When I tried to look back
And I tried
I looked back over my shoulder
And saw you talking, laughing
And when they mentioned my name
You said, “I know her,”
So surely
Plainly
Confidently
And I laughed to myself as I watched you
For I knew you were wrong
True, you’ve met me
But
You don’t know me
You only know my soft spots
Where you poke and **** and jab
Watching me wince
As I try to tell you a story
My story
But you only half-listen
You haven’t the slightest inkling
That I am the strangest person
You’ll ever meet
And that I’ll never be anything you expected

You’ve found me predictable
And extend your hand
Knowing that I’ll stand here with my halo
And refuse it
So you keep your hand extended
Confident that I’ll never take it
Remembering that I told you
I can’t climb
And that I’m always scared
But you keep laughing
Thinking you’ve beaten me
Put me in my place
Forgetting that I have no place
I defy categorization
And the realization hits me as I look back at
All my neat categories
Where I tried desperately to fit my bits and pieces

I keep thinking I’ve found it
My spot in the puzzle
But I never quite fit
Not for long
Because you come around and reshape me
And I fit no where

I left a trail of bread crumbs
Hoping my past self would come find me
As I rocket blindly forward
Clutching my halo as I dodge
All my chances to live
While the Fates look on
Grinning with morbid satisfaction as they
Weave my sordid tapestry
Giddy with their knowledge of what is to come
As I stumble
Afraid of tomorrow
And never quite getting past today
Every day I’m tempted
To ****** the scissors from the hand of Atropos
And cut my thread before I can plummet
But you pry the scissors from my unsteady fingers
Knowing that I’m frozen in fear
Because I like the option of turning back
I hate you for it
Because I know tomorrow you’ll laugh at me
Thinking you know me
While I ponder your intentions
Driving myself crazy
Watching as everything I’ve ever done
Rears its ugly head
And all the words that have ever crossed the space between
You and me
Come up to haunt me
Driving me further and faster
Swirling
Twirling
Whirling
Spinning, spinning, spinning
Winding me up in this vortex
And I’ll never be able to stop
Because no one will try to help me
And you’ll watch on
As I blur ‘round and ‘round
My features blending with color-coded memories
While you brush off the stories I try tossing you
My regrets pull me by the hair
Sending me faster still
And you’ve forgotten me altogether
And it matters not whether you knew me
Because I’m going down, down, down
Pulling no one with me
Falling alone, with only my halo
And my fears
Still color-coded and shrink-wrapped
Wondering if I’ll ever get it right

It should have been like coming home
But it was more like running away
Plunging head-first into the ocean
And popping up on a different shore
This is where I come from
But this is really where I’m escaping to
Leaving behind this day-to-day that traps me
And emerging someplace mythical
Becoming something mythical
Shaking the water out of my hair
Only to find a mermaid’s tail at the end of my legs
Gorgona
Voiceless as Ariel
But ready to smash unsuspecting ships against the rocks
Anything is possible if you say the wrong thing
But the right words will save you
So I’ll be straining my ears to hear them
Because I still haven’t quite given up hoping
Though we no longer speak the same language

What you wanted was war
Thundering and merciless
Wanted Armageddon to roll in
So you could follow every avenging angel
Brash with bloodlust
And feel righteous in the end

I felt the shift in the atmosphere
Heard the horsemen, saw the lightning
But I had long ago grown weary
Of desperate, clashing swords

You built trebuchets
So I built walls
Studying the stillness of stones
Observing the physics of load bearing and
Force balancing and
Standing unshaken as the sky itself shatters

The onslaught was calculated
Unyielding and arrogant
But of all the accusations lobbed over the ramparts
The only ones that drew blood
Were those fashioned after my own devices
Those festering things that grew out of my nightmares
Seeded with the secrets I'd once let fall in peacetime

You've called out endlessly for my head
But I won't bleed out for you here
I've been studying the patience of water
The salty tracks quietly working their way
Through all the hard places
Out to the sea

I won't bleed out for you here
I faced the red maw that would unmake me
I spun my own stitches out of ether
And lived

There was cold boredom
And there was colder familiarity
And
Colder still
There was indifference
And I sat trying to light a fire
Only to find that my heart wasn't in it

I'd rather sit here shivering
Than conjure up tinderboxes
I don't have the energy
And, quite frankly
I'm tired of the flames

Clumsy words that don’t make sense
Prance from my besotted pen
Empty words, far too dense—
Why did I try to write, again?

You were the wall I planned to keep
Breaking myself against
A breathless distraction to chase the
Thoughts right out of my head
Glassy-eyed
I wanted to run wild with you all night
I wanted all your pretty nonsense to be real
And if I had to bet
On every bone in my body
I'd say the same was true of you

It's a shame you left me to my own devices
For we sketched such a beautiful
Delusion

These are the days no one warned me about
When my head feels so heavy
It won’t lift from my pillow
When making a cup of coffee
Seems like an insurmountable task
When everything
Everything
Is stupid and useless and worthless
And I can’t remember what it was like to feel fine

I don’t know how I got here
I don’t remember the wrong turn that I took
The wrong exit on the highway
The wrong class
The wrong decision
The wrong something
But it must have happened at some point
Because this can’t be how it’s supposed to be
Spending days drowning in Chinese food and wine
Wishing the sun just won’t rise tomorrow

Cars rushed past,
Threatening to douse him in freezing puddles,
And he stood calmly at the intersection,
Unperturbed and solid.
Hood pulled up,
He strolled as if nothing in the world could ever upset him.

I imagined myself running after him,
Abandoning my car in the middle of Tremont Street
And dashing through traffic.
Messy hair would meet beaming smile,
Gangly limbs to Mediterranean hips,
Head to rest on something solid,
Relief and amazement
After all this time,
Finally, finally, finally…

Blond hair and a willowy frame
Reminded me that I hate the rain,
Especially in March.
It’s been years since he looked at me that way,
Yet disappointment still knotted my stomach
And whitened my knuckles around my steering wheel.

Two solid figures kept pace,
And I veered the other way,
Realizing the extent of my shortcomings
As my knees trembled in my stuffy car.

I wanted to stay up to watch the meteors
Not for the sake of the stars
But for the chance to slough off a bit of loneliness
I’ve been restless
And sleepless
And it would have been nice
To have someone gazing back for a change

It would have been nice
If you had come to share the starlight with me
Not for the stars’ sake
But for mine

It was raining in the desert,
Fat drops splashing
Against dunes that didn't know how to
Absorb them.
The flooding was quick,
The haze was unbearable,
And I wondered idly
If the clouds had gotten
Lost,
Jumped onto some
Wayward jet stream
And wound up in Abu Dhabi instead of Seattle.

I felt for them.

Muddy sand rivers that couldn't handle the
Downpour
Had me asking myself what jet stream I'd jumped
To end up here,
Never quite where I wanted to be,
Setting my course for brighter days
But landing
In a heap
In the middle of
Nowhere.

It's a strange thing to wage war
In the space between consciousness
And eyelids
Fingertips fluttering over light-switch trigger
As the endless tic-tic-ticking of the wall clock
Inches ever closer to dawn

Night time has always been the worst

As the drowsy city slows down
My heart speeds faster still
Dodging anxious shrapnel as I lie
Sleepless
Swallowed by the restless thoughts
Whose assault I can no longer resist

The city would have certainly swallowed me
To it, I was
Nothing
An insignificant girl pacing among the skyscrapers
Clack clack clack
Just another percussive layer to the cacophony of thousands
So I rushed home
Childlike
Hid among my sheets lest I was lost in the din
I wanted to be no one and
Everyone
At once
And I could feel the fraying of all my edges
As dissonance picked me apart
Went over each bone, one by one
Pulled sinew from skin from bleeding vessel
And asked me why I had done this to myself

I had done this to myself

Each firing neuron mocked me
Reminded me that there was no solace
In big spaces
Just tiny rooms made tinier by clutter
And percussive feelings
Clack clack clack
Through my skull, round and round
An infinite loop that I can’t break
All because I let myself fall
I should have never
I should have never
I should have never

I've been searching bottle bottoms
And scouring city streets
And scraping plastic plates
And surrounding myself with things
And hoping for a spark
And a miracle
And just a little bit more strength

I thought I had seen my future
Saw nothing stretched out before me
But a never-ending monotone of lukewarm
Indifference
All passion flung away from me
For fear of feeling the
Mediocrity
I'd accepted

There was no fire there
There was no shine there
There was barely anything I'd want to call
Life
There
And something softly whispered to me
"You'll never be happy
In this unremarkable place."

I'm still reeling from the shock
Of waking up
Of finding myself with heart pounding
Breath catching
Eyes wide open
Giddy with the swooping butterflies of new beginnings

I'm still reeling from the realization
That I started over
Took a brazen leap away from boredom
And landed in all the sensations I was sure had
Abandoned me

They weren't gone, after all
Just waiting for the right wake-up call

Sitting here
Face tingling
Fingertips dancing across brighter days
I've been wondering how I ever entertained the thought
Of an eternity that was anything less than
Thrilling

There are brief, shining moments
When I exist only for
Myself
When my words aren’t rearranged for anyone’s comfort
And my face isn’t composed for anyone’s enjoyment
And my body is just
My own

I have never belonged to myself

I grew up passed from
Judgment to judgment
Eyes raking me at every turn
So I would sit
Every day
In front of the mirror
And pick myself apart for the world’s consumption

Everyone has always taken what they wanted

I have driven myself insane
Trying to keep fragments of my own
To just hold on to the feeling of being mine
But I have never known how to be that way
And I will give everything I have
Until I have nothing

If you’ve ever hydroplaned
You’ve felt the wild slide of wheels leaving pavement
While your heart’s in your throat as you wonder
If you’ll land calmly on the other side
Or go careening into a tree

It is this feeling that has gripped me since I fell for you
And my life has been a blur of racing heart
Uncertain how to maintain self
While tumbling chaotically through partnership
Terrifyingly exposed
Bewildered and aching
Because loving is so much

I will offer everything I am
And spin out of control
But I don’t know what comes after
Or after
Or after

It felt like the day was made for vengeful gods
The same tired face
On every windblown pedestrian with their umbrella flipped
Inside out
Belying the drudgery of existence that morning
And I felt like it was only a matter of time
Before the city drowned me

For the millionth time in my life
I had the realization that I spend my time
Peering into people’s faces
Wondering what they’re feeling
Which wouldn’t be so bad if anyone had spared me a second glance
The feeling of being both too much and never enough
Had pulled at all my loose ends
Until I finally flipped inside out in a downpour
All the tiny hinges holding me together
Snapping in defeat
As I came to terms with the fact that
No one
Was going to try to keep me out of the wind

I was made for vengeful gods
Built for crashing through storms
Because mortals left me with nothing but heartache
None of them has the eyes to see
How I pulled myself to pieces to shield them from hurricanes
I would light myself on fire
Just to take the chill out of their bones
And when I have nothing left
I’ll be the neutron star or the black hole or the spent piece of space junk
That everyone forgot to see while it could still shine

The physical therapist said
To imagine I was tearing the floor
Apart
With my feet

It wasn't hard to imagine

Every day feels like an exercise in
Self-control
In order to keep myself from shredding everything around me
To keep myself from
Jumping out of my skin
To keep myself
Tame
Despite the unending roaring pressing on my skull

Tell me,
What are the chances of a lightning strike?
I found myself staying out all night,
Chasing the forked streaks
Until I collided with you
—I always did want to believe in Fate—
So maybe I had glitter in my eyes
Or maybe we out-dazzled the stars.

Tell me,
How do you think this ends?
I've felt the sparks biting my skin,
Delirious like a fever dream.
Words are such flimsy anchors at the break of dawn
And I wonder
If we'll stay to set the sky on fire
Or blow away like ash.

One day
I'll break open a bottle of champagne
And look back on all this
Like a crazy story
Something that happened to
Someone else
A stranger
A different life I left in a pile of
Ash
But today
I'm hurling myself off a cliff
Not knowing if I'll sprout wings
Or crash

Meandering in broken fantasies
Listless
Aching for every intangible hypothetical
Heartbroken over fictions
And more heartbroken still
That even the glittering shards of dashed dreams
Will outshine my weary reality

I fear the stillness
In the quiet
My thoughts are carrion birds
Circling
Ripping apart the flimsy skin
Of all the lies I've told myself
The denial I've tried to put on
Like armor
Like sequins
Like ill-fitting
Distraction

At 3 am
I'll wake with my heart racing
Laid bare by nightmares
And the daydreams that led to them
Sick with the realization that
No matter how badly
I wanted things
To turn out
Better
Sheer force of will would have never been
Enough

I will keep crossing out
The tender lines
And the soft words
And all the evidence of how badly
I just want to be seen
So that I can keep lying to myself
I am playacting a version of me
Whose heart doesn't jump for anyone
And doesn't ache to be gathered close
And if I can just keep on pretending
Maybe one day
It will be true

Perhaps we thought we could move in with Schrödinger's cat
And be everything
And nothing
At once
(as long as no one asked)
We could be simultaneously aflame
And just waiting for a match to strike
As long as no one opened the ****
Box

In retrospect
It's a lot to ask
For people not to go prying open lids

This wild heart
Will be too much for tame mortals
For those who never taught themselves
To howl out all their pain
Passion is a terror
Because it claws you open
Yet I have been facing my fears
I have stood here
Offering all that I am
Knowing that too many
Will shrink back into themselves
This glimpse of something real sends them running
Back to cold, familiar artifice
It reminds them
That denial is a comfort

Someday
When you try to convince me
That I never exposed my fiery heart
I'll look to my cleaved ribs
And recognize the soothing lie you've woven

My body has forgotten what it is to be calm
I wake at 2 AM
3 AM
4 AM
Heart racing, racing, racing
Hurtling out of my
Cleaved ribs
Dizzy from trembling like an
Overwound spring
The potential energy buzzing through my skull
Every nerve ready to strike
Ready to fire
Ready to set me ablaze
I howl into my pillow
Until my lungs fracture
Until I'm coughing up soot
From the scorching frenzy coiling beneath my skin
The primal need to hold someone's hand through the dark
Has me twitching like an addict
Has me sweating like withdrawal
Has me wondering why I never had the sense
To shield my fragile ribcage
The terrible thing about having
A heart full of flowers
Is most people aren't gentle
And human instinct is to cut daisies
Rather than tend the garden
And I
Foolish and tender-hearted
Will keep licking affection off knives
Because I've never seen a silver spoon

If you demand from my weary atoms
That which I would have otherwise freely given
You'll find it's not offered willingly again
Call it repulsion
Revulsion
Outright rebellion
But I've lived all my life in fear
And I will fall underfoot
No more

It was never the searing heat that got me
Nor the heights
I have always known I could fly
Even if mud-caked mules tried to convince me
That I was doomed to be earthbound
No
The atmosphere was choking me
Down here with my demons and dilemmas and denials
So despite desperate braying
I unfurled fragile wings and
Soared
Caught an updraft
Until I had outrun it all
Until all I could hear was my own thundering heart
Hammering my problems to pixie dust

It was the shimmering
That was my first undoing
Enamored
I crowned myself queen in the clouds
Swirled in gilded revelry
And smiled lazily at this sweat-slicked kingdom
Even knowing that someday
Someday
Gravity would have its way
But up here
Force and the laws of physics
Seemed too far to ever catch me
Here
Where everything was lined with silver
I thought I could trick Fate
Into handing someday to someone else

In the end
The shock of the fall
Was because it wasn't on my to-do list
I was still reveling
Reckless in the radiance
Basking in the sun
And running from all the things
That had kept me up at night
Holding court in my cloud castle
Imagine my surprise
When I realized I hadn't outpaced them all
That feeling of the floor falling out from under me
When one caught me by the wings
And yanked
Fate, it seemed, would not be denied
Had to be paid Her somedays
In full
As I tumbled into gravity's clutches
I wondered if this time
This time
Would be when I'd stop learning the hard way
If someday my lessons could be coaxed from me gently
Rather than ripped from me screaming
If a different kind of someday could find me
As I lay
Bruised and bewildered
In the mud

I have always told my troubles to the moon
Offered up saltwater sacrifice
That I might learn how to face the light of day
Unafraid
Each sunrise would find me fitful
Restless with an ache I didn't know how to soothe
Stumbling and shrinking and
Cowed by the weight of expectation

When I was ready to open my very veins to the night
The moon insisted
I stop making sacrifices alone in the dark
Under her watch
I suddenly heard the relentless ticking of every clock
Felt it rattling my bones
Like a warning
I had let fear throttle me
Until days dragged by like a prison sentence
And some hidden, untamed part of me
Finally lashed out at the leash leading me to the gallows

Throat raw
Nails ragged
Heart racing towards the wildness that had not abandoned me
I stood defiant in the sunlight
And dared anyone to try to break me
Again

I have always said I have little time for
Thought experiments
The tedium of philosophy
Is of no use for me
Because here on Earth
We know that Sisyphus was miserable

I have always been shoving boulders up mountains
Seeing no other way than the hardest one
A task that requires exacting attention
Precision
Perfection
But mortal bodies can only take so much
Sudden collapse should not have seemed so
Sudden

I have always been foolish and deluded
Plagued by dangerous thinking thinking thinking
A dissonant orchestra that never tires
Ever conjuring phantasms
Fears and fantasies at war
A sparkling utopia in the clouds
And then the reminder that I am
Earthbound

They always say
It's like boiling a frog

It was more like
Damnation
Eternal and unflinching
An ouroboros
Whose fangs always held
Venom

Inside an unhinged jaw
It's easy to be
Blind
To lose your bearings
And mistake a predator's steaming breath
For the heat of the sun

In scarcity
It's easy to think
Scraps
Are the best you'll ever get
But even Hades grew sick of darkness
And ventured into the wildflowers

At two am
You'll dissect the snake for answers
You'll wonder
What would you have done differently
If your senses hadn't been so
Warped

The moment you walked through my door
I understood I'd been a woman
Starved
A creature of wildflowers and sunshine
Browbeaten into icy darkness
Until you reminded me of the
Hunger
That had been roaring beneath the surface

The aching emptiness of it
Tore right through me
And as we fell into step
Could you see it on my face?
As we spoke into the freezing wind
Unleashing the wild
Thrumming
In my veins
Could you hear it in my voice?
Could you hear the unspoken wishes
Or just the raw
Ache
Of the years that stretched taut between us?

I've been walking in the sunshine
And I'm burning with it now
All the things
I wouldn't let myself feel
The gnawing that threatened me
Every time I closed my eyes
The demanding hunger that will no longer
Be caged
The skittering of my foolish
Heart
Always so eager
Always brimming and leaping and crying out for
More
Because I have never once been able to do something halfway
No matter how many times
I nearly lose myself

I'll offer you this frenzied fire
And hope you meet me where I am
Hope you hear the desperate roaring
And roar right back
Hope you see the starving creature beneath the bravado
And offer
Fire
Of your own

When a lifetime of living by others' rules
Saw me not choose myself
While my head was screaming and railing against it
I just...fell out of my life
The riptide of pleasing everyone
Dragged me along
And I smiled even as I was drowning.

Nothing could have saved me by then
The yoke of expectation was too heavy
I was always going to tire of thrashing
And sink

You didn't know me in the days when I was unstoppable,
back in the days when frenetic energy propelled me
forward and forward and forward and
the weight of everyone else's anger hadn't yet
yoked me. I had enough momentum to keep pulling
for a while. My sorry bones have since been crushed.
An endless parade of people who insisted they
knew better has climbed on my back to reach
new heights. Without fanfare, I got used to sitting
on the floor. These days, you'll find me mourning at
the altar of my wasted youth, picking myself apart
again and again and again, wondering where I lost
the thread. These days, you'll find me flat on my back
in the dirt, reaching lamely for the sky, trying to
remember who I used to be.

This is the loose thread I can't help but pull
Even as I watch the unraveling
I can't stop
Can't convince my fingers to still their fidgeting

This is my self-destructive nature
The urge to poke and poke at bruises
To endlessly stick my tongue in the bleeding chasm of a missing tooth
To pick and scratch and needle at everything that
Hurts

This hour
And the next
And the next and the next and the next
I will stare at my phone, crestfallen
Wishing against all hope for your name
Sending desperate messages into the ether
Opening old wounds that I'll never let heal
Praying for the sense to finally let you go

I don’t know how to start this story
Because I don’t know how I got here

One day
I woke up to find myself surrounded by ruins
And
Cracked ribs
Wondering if there were
Cracks in the foundation
I should have seen from the get-go

It feels empty to scream at
Tumbled bricks
But that’s all I have these days
So their weary edges have heard all my woes now
All the things I’ve lost
The life I thought I would have
Before it turned to dust in my hands

It is such a funny thing
Waking up each day now
And walking around as though my existence isn’t
Straddling a fault line
My bones feel ready to shatter from the
Strain
Of holding myself together
Little crackling noises following me
As I wonder if this is the day
My skeleton finally submits to the dust

I should have seen this coming
Should have known better than to throw my life
Wide open
On a wager
And a schoolboy’s whim
But it all seemed so shiny
So breathtaking
And I never stopped to think about the day
I’d grow sick of gasping for air
Nor the realization that I’d been clutching
Pyrite
All along

So I guess this is a story
Of what a glittering fool I’ve been
Always offering the best of myself
To those who would **** it dry
Never seeing the warning signs
Convinced
This
Time
Will
Be
Different
Even as the bricks around me come crashing down

I have been trying to extract
Revenge
From my own flesh
Greeting every midnight with the frenzy
Of an immortal who has seen
Too many sunrises
This is mania that
Burns down my throat and
Breathes in my ear and
Bleeds out dizzy secrets in the back of a cab

When you swept through and left me hollow
I was already primed to starve
And you, consumed by the same mania,
Had us hurtling through the night like this moment could
Never end
You extracted the brilliant stardust I offered in the dull city
And left sweet whispers all over my kitchen floor

I watched each one dissolve
Like spun sugar
Until I could have sworn I'd imagined it all

My ancestors would have burned you for less
Sent your ashes scattering to whatever
Vengeful god
Would take them
And I feel a thrumming in my veins
Calling for a sacrifice
So I hope the spectre of this moment never leaves you
Trails its icy fingers down your neck at every midnight
And coats your skin with sickly stickiness
Leaves you feverish and frantic
When you remember
All the shining things that could have been
If your words had had substance

I have spent the better part of my life
Feeling like feelings are going to tear me
To pieces
The programming of my brain has
The gain set
Way too high so
Everything
Is an assault on the neurons that
Can't fire fast enough
Too bright
Too loud
Too sad
Too angry
Too tired

Too much

I collapsed inward

Soldiering on for the sake of
Appearances
I can feel the restlessness rending
My ribcage in half
So I'm pleading with whoever will
Listen
To make it stop
Please
Make
It
Stop
The anxious pacing of my neurons
The fervor of my frantic mind
The scrambling
Scrabbling
Scared
Lizard brain
Stuck in a loop
Fight, flight, freeze
Fight, flight, freeze
Fight
Flight
Freeze

Fight

After you'd wielded all your spite like a cudgel
After I'd choked on my pleas
After your torrent of venom doused the last spark I had
The concept of future was moot

Today
And tomorrow
And the day after
You will scorn me for having banked fires
Ignoring the trail of ruined umbrellas
Rewriting the narrative to say you were there
Holding a match

Is this what the beginning of a
Psychotic break
Feels like?
More enamored with fiction than reality
Walking up at 5 am with
Tachycardia
And the weight of an elephant squeezing your chest so
It's impossible to
Breathe
The past seems more real than the present and the
Present
Seems muted except for the
Anxiety
And
Despair

I am falling endlessly

I don't know where the bottom is

I don't know how to bring myself back