I’ve always been afraid of dying
Because I don’t believe in god
But when I look into your eyes
I see mountains and oceans
The curve of the earth
The cosmos colliding
Infinite space and time
Beginning and the end
Now I think
It’ll be okay to die
Because I’ll just find those eyes again
Waiting for me
In the next life
And the one after that

Give me everything that clings to you
All the anxieties and aches
The sickly sticky pain
I’ll pick it from your tree
Like oranges in the summertime
And because it comes from you
It’ll taste just as sweet

Just once
I long to bring heat to the chill
Wish I could flip the switch
Find the emotions hidden away
Shoved away
Banished deep within me
I want to show something on my face
Show the cracks within the mask
Just so that someone
Anyone
Would ask if I’m okay

Lay your fingers on my skin and dig
claw, scrape, and degrade me
until you feel the rot that lays beneath,
beating and secreting into my bloodstream,
desolate and dead but searing to the touch.
Grip it and rip it away
**** it between your smile, throw it to the wolves.
We’ll howl with them
as the full moon rises.

I was just 13 years old when Vincent Van Gogh took me out to a wheat field and shot me in the chest. He said I'll let you in on the easy way out because eating yellow paint just doesn't help but god, doesn't it sound poetic? He said he craved ***** things in a letter to his brother but when the paint didn't make his art any better he used bullets and blood instead.

I was just 16 when Sylvia Plath opened up the oven for me. My snow boots turned to puddles and the smell of cookies muddled with the gas filling up my head. She said putting words to paper just doesn't hash it and a poets mind is nothing but ashes so better to let the thoughts burn.

I was only 18 when Virginia Woolf tied stones to my hips and led me adrift into open waters. Gasping while my hands struggled to stay above the waves she told me that this was the only way and that stories were just stories. She could write a million of them but never escape the loneliness of being unable to evaporate inside the pages.

I was 21 years old when Ms Monroe told me it was as easy as falling asleep and swallowing some seeds that would feed and feed until they felt like yellow paint. Easy down the throat like the men that she'd known who now tear at my curls. She said wanting to be loved comes at a price that money just can't buy and pills will always be cheaper.

I am 25 years old and have carried their woes down my arms and legs like Marley's chains. All the gun shots and flame rots and drowning spells and yellow pills have beckoned me with promises of a happy ending. They convince me that all artist's lives end the same but I know that they don't have to. So—here I still stand, clutching their art in my hands, braving a world that they were too good for.

The passenger seat of someone else's car
is a place that I can get lost in.
The seat that was off limits
until I was 10 years old,
now my introspective throne.
The world passes through my window like
memories I've long since forgotten.
A blur of aced tests and overachieving I want
to soak my brain in.
The wasted time in long lines,
my first standing ovation,
emotions that blend
with the Little Trees Lavender.
All the pain of the world can't penetrate
my secluded steel fortress,
so I sink deeper into the cushion.

I’ve stopped seeing my reflection
In the mirrors I frequent past
I can’t remember if it’s gone completely
Or if I’ve just forgotten to look

Last I checked it had escaped
Traveling in the dimension between
Overwhelmed by the polished glass
Tired of seeing only me staring back

It doesn’t seem important to check anymore
So I rush past mirrors with my head tucked
My reflection still wanders invisible
Sometimes I hear it slip through the cracks

I wonder if I’m still here
When I pinch my arm my reflection cries out
Lost and misplaced in the labyrinth of space
I continue on without it