when you hate yourself so much that you can feel it in your bones
and nothing feels as good as the tightening around your throat
and physical pain is just a distraction from the empty darkness in your soul

when you dig down deep inside but find nothing but carcasses of thoughts
and even though the memories are vague, the emotion has yet to rot
and despite their blurred outlines, scars, you have not forgot

when you know that they have skinned you, left you tarred and feathered
left you out to fend for yourself in the harshest of weather
you know, deep inside, that
someday it will all be better

                    *-lf-

I am as empty as they come
a ship with holes in its floorboards;
life seeps in and out of me, a constant balance of nothingness.
I'm aware of the input, but it slides out from underneath me
before I have a chance to bid it a proper goodbye.

I am as empty as they come
a disillusioned body suffering from disorders of the mind;
a carcass of medication packaged neatly with skin and vacant eyes.

I am as empty as they come:
An abandoned ship,
An abandoned mind,
the disillusioned eyes of the blind.

I am as empty as they come.
But I too,
was once filled to the brim
with heart-pounding vigor.
        
                                      *-lf-

He opened doors to both Heaven and hell
but contradicting conflict is preferable to the purgatory of false confidence.

I numbed my soul with constructions and sudden reality is jarring.
Nobody likes being cut cold turkey
but the way he wipes my tears and touches his lips to mine makes the withdrawal infinitely better than intoxicating fantasies of escape.

                          *-lf-

I used to hide out in blankets of ice
behinds walls of steel
reading a book written in his blood.
I used to let his ink seep into my nerves
and down into my spine
dissolving the backbone I once had.

I used to cover the mirror with rose-coloured tape
hoping to shy away from self-loathing
while laughter left my lips in bouts.
I cut my hair, hoping it would cut him out
and grow happiness in its absence.

But then you snuck into the crook of my heart
through the cracks in my skin.
And you saw a body pulsing with more than just blood
more than just flesh and bone and muscle.
You can trace my anger with your eyes
and settle the fear that ignites my bones.
I almost ran away, clutching my brokenness to my
chest but you didn’t let go.
You’re the first to make my tongue bleed with
happiness and melt my ribs into your body.

You taste like sin and smell like trouble
but I’ve never been good enough to care.
And even though I swore I’d never falter over
another man’s face as long as I lived,
all that’s ever been missing
was you.  

                 *-lf-

Although my height has not grown in years, with every day that I grow older, with each experience, I feel farther and farther away from the ground - head racing towards the clouds, yet body still somehow planted on foreign land.

                           *-lf-