I wait for peace to find its way into my bones and hair ******* with bows
by the train tracks.

I throw stones
that skip over a river like
r-r-records;
Sublime,
Bradley Nowell, slurring out
the same line
over and over and over,
something about a corner store,
a collection of words that when I sing them,
taste like July.
1, 2, 3,
the rock disappears.

A train passes by,
engine huffing,
wheels churning out a steady rhythm of
"Please don't leave me, please don't leave me."
Dead reggae and dead love,
tangled in its underbelly,
rusted metal guts.

I look into the river to try to find the stone I skipped again.
I think I almost see it,
dead weight,
a speck under the surface.

(Do you believe in ghost trains? I hear something howl every night.)

She is beautiful.
Her dress is soft over her body like prom queen thigh silk,
her hair running down her back like God  never gave up his gold.
I could see her smile across a room,
and even if it wasn't real,
(I don't know)
it was beautiful:
her hairpin curved lips and blue eyes that don't read
"Drink me",
they will not make you smaller
or bigger.
They will, however, leave you sitting under the hot sun,
1:43 pm,
simmering at the thoughts of speaking to someone with fingers so much more dainty than yours,
And a voice so much more like the dew on leaves.
You don't even know her.

Sunkissed freckles like creek pebbles
Resting on my shoulder, sunlight filtering onto my skin from your cheeks.
I am envious of every ghost that gets to tuck you in and knows what makes you tick tick tick tick tick
12:30
Quit knocking on every fold of my brain, they're not much different, they're all graffitied with your name, if I can feel your hand anywhere close to me.
Every creak of this old door has my head turning to find you,
Find you in the soft dumb center of this earth and my mind and my fingernails.
My hands, my hands, my hands, what are they holding?
Empty, are you so empty that you're going to fill your life with dead rock n rollers?
(Let me be the something that lifts the dirt from your teeth and the spoiled milk from your boiling blood.)

Let's teach something that's empty, to be broken. Let's teach a ghost to bleed. Let's teach a kid to be dead.

Get closer to your dad's gun, than your dad. Inch the barrel to your teeth, saw off the end and the limbs you don't need to hold it. Burst your blood vessels like fireworks, New Year's Eve. This is the dawn of your abandonment of everything you love. Become attached? Find a flaw. **** them anyway. They make you feel alive? Make sure they know that they are the reason you wanted to die in the first place. You love them? **** yourself. Cut yourself. Find a way to make yourself bleed. You cannot win, you cannot let yourself win anything. No, not a single thread of anyone's heart, especially after you pull the strings taut and snap them until they foam from the mouth. You can see their eyes flip up back into their head, staring at their brain to see why they're still putting up with you. This, this is how you know you won in the only way you want to.

Let people know just how to break you. You go into the bathroom and flick on the light, look into the mirror as it illuminates your ugly sunken face. The smokes didn't take a couple years off your life, you'd say it added around 10 judging by the dark plum circles under your eyes and brittle nails. Your reflection blinks laboriously as say your name, 3 times, slowly, and she does not love you. You are still not enough for her. She is still not here. You are still scarred and addicted and hideous. You are alone and afraid and still just as ****** up. Even your own reflection turns its back to you.

The addictive pain keeps you [in]sane. Your friends are all nonexistent, those who know you, don't know you. You quit the pills for the girl next door but you're just spilling cleaner, safer blood now. Your wrist never thanked you for leaving it alone, but everyone else soon will. ******* is your other name. ******* is your philosophy. Love you or hate you, you still hate you so what does it matter?

But hey, I've stopped believing in God but I keep seeing him everywhere. I've seen him in every ******'s poor eyes and their rough, calloused, sliced open hands. I've seen Him in the footprints left by kids in the grass. He's in every word I write and breath I take. You think I haven't wanted to kiss the forehead of someone just like you? You think I haven't imagined myself telling you it's gonna be okay a thousand times? If you want your love confession you got it right here. Kid, you can call yourself a pacifist when you stop beating the **** out of yourself. You're gonna meet someone who makes you regret trying to **** yourself slowly. Just put down the knife/broken glass/razor/ lost lover/pills/cigarettes/absent seatbelt/self hatred/lighter/memory and look up to the sky, the sun is shining fool. I love you and every dumb thing you do.