i woke up at 3 am
craving your voice
you're captivating
and everyone else bores me
i don't think there will ever be a day
that i don't think about you
my hair is in knots
the words i want to say
are tangled up in my mouth

i want to be
allowed to
kiss the
tips of your
fingers and
trace your
collarbones
with my
tongue

sometimes i wonder
if the world i live in
is one i made up in my head
that exists only for me

and if that’s true
i don’t mind
because the world i’ve created
is filled with madness
but the best madness i’ve created for myself
is you

I am a swipe of coarse paint
smudged and softened
by curious fingertips
that shade and shape me
and hang me helplessly
on a wall

I am the color of the sky
when  flurries of snow
sprinkle the streets
with no regards
to the shoulder-racking shivers
they bring along

I am a dusty book
in the corner of the library
with a broken spine
and I lay torn and tattered
from too much use
or perhaps too little

I am the empty shell
of a person
who has been drained
of their butterflies
and want nothing more
than to feel something
rather than an abundance
of nothing
and nothing at all

I can only warn you this once:
do not let it slip back in

if you do
it will sink you like a ship;
it will map out your crevices
and tiny little holes
that polka-dot the bridge
of your collarbones
and take hold
and pump sadness into
your shell of a body

if you do
it will bury you like a casket;
it will cloak you
in all of its charcoal warmth
that burns your insides
and shields you from things
you should welcome into
your shell of a body

if you do
it will cage you in like an animal;
it will build its wall
of heavy slates of hate
that blind your pretty
glimmering eyes
and hide
your shell of a body

if you do
it will hit you like a bullet;
it will slam you onto
its filthy gravel
of ugly words that tell you
things you should
never believe about
your shell of a body

I can only warn you once:
Do not let it slip back in

They tell me to let it go
but how can I do that
when it
has latched onto me
and made a home
in my silence

It has started
paying rent
and the fee
is rotting me
from the outside
in

It has started
to scar
and I wish to feel
at least
a little less
like the dog-eared page
of the book
you never finished

It has started
or should I say
continued
to leave me
empty of explanations
and full of hurt
and still
they tell me to let it go