SLOTH is playing at an empty concert hall, your callused hands caressing your violin like a lover nevermore and you try to drown out the commotion of the world outside these walls with the song that plays in your ears now, gentle and melodically hypnotic but it can’t stop the onslaught of noises and you are nothing more than a tense string on the violin, quivering at the intensity at which you pull yourself together to keep from snapping, so you ignore the droning helicopters circling above, the honks of cars bustling on the nighttime strip, the talking, the laughing, the endless, nonstop percussion of the universe pushing into your mind with no chance of backing down and good god, it never stops and it wears you thin but you continue, numbing the wretched noise and you play and you play and you play -you, this tenuous string on the verge of snapping- and you believe that if you continue to play the symphony outside would actually pause and listen, become silent with awe and the entire loud orchestra from the trumpets of blaring cars, to the flute of the birds on the swaying trees, to the drums of the words coming from people’s mouths will stop and stare but when the song finally ends, you realize the world continued on without you, playing its torturous tune to no end, shrugging away your attempt at trying to block it all out, and you’re exhausted and breathing hard and you realize that this constant brutality of life is so ******* tiring, and you grow weary, bones dragged down by languor, and you’d rather fade into the dusty old background than embrace cruel fate because what’s the use in anything anymore when it’s just going to slap you right back in your face, and you stop, take a deep breath and give up and the string finally fractures, curling ever so slightly on two separate sides of the spectrum, never to be fixed because sloth doesn’t care if you played too hard and you finally snap, not when utter silence strikes and it’s left alone to lounge away and let the world pass by in blissful static.

WRATH is driving away late at night, fists clenched, alcohol racing through your veins like a grand prix, thoughts raging like thunder booming outside, rain washing away the trail of fire left in your wake, flashes of lightening intermingling with hazy, muted colors of the stoplights, and you’re in your car, going faster than time on fast forward, blurring past looming trees and buildings until the landscape is nothing more than an old painting smearing from your tears and you’re driving, foot on the accelerator, pushing 60, 70, 80, until the numbers start to fade and you try to focus on the road because you have to or not you’ll be back to thinking again -even with all that whiskey burning your throat into sandpaper and all that *** blazing away the garden of Eden in your mind- and you’ll still be back to thinking, thinking about all the pain living inside your wiry skeleton and you can’t get away from it, no matter how far you drive or how fast you go or how much you drink, and you’ll slam your fists on the wheel with frustration and force 100, 110, 120, watching the rain plummet onto your windshield and you’ll cry and sob and rage -oh utter agony- and you’ll be so angry, so tortured, so enraged with yourself and the world and the awful, crooked pain that you won’t even care that you’ve spun out of control and slammed head first into a glass waterfall of ignorance and oblivion you’ve craved for because pain can’t overcome the power of wrath when it takes hold and taints your blood on the street.

ENVY is staring yourself down in the full body mirror, holding back the bile building in your throat as your mind plagues you with the thoughts of how you’ll never be skinny enough or pretty enough or tall enough or handsome enough or human enough and it stings -oh it stings against your sloppy, disgusting face- that you’ll never be enough because other people are so much more luckier, so much more intelligent, so much more attractive -so much more anything- than you and it gets to you, all the way underneath your skin like a wicked poison and you start to wonder, wonder why do others have it better and why you can’t have what they have because what’s so wrong with desiring what others have and then you notice that the reason why is because you are you and you are never desired for and it makes you feel worthless and furious and so awful that the poison boiling in your body starts to take its toll and you scratch at you neck until it bleeds, pinch a piece of nonexistent fat on your stomach, viciously tear at your nails so that they become ****** stumps, destroy and damage everything you hate about yourself until all that’s left is the same person you were starting at before only now you’re weak and tired and wondering why can’t others feel the way you do, why they are enough already, why they are so much more, and you’ll stare at yourself until the burning effects of your glare gives off plenty of 3rd degree burns to make you sigh, turn away, and always wonder why because envy doesn’t cure how you feel in the end, not when it’s wondering how it can become better like everyone else.

I want to forget I really do I want to forget everything until all that’s left is your name so I can cross it out in permanent black ink - ** - like the way you did when you signed letters out to me because they meant a kiss from you but I don’t want poison kisses, no I don’t need them, I want oblivion I crave ignorance not some stupid excuse for love I want to remove the taste of you that lingers in my mouth like blood drawn from biting my inner cheeks too hard and I want to vanquish every memory ever made - ** ** ** ** - I want them crossed out until all I see are overlapping broken X’s. Do you understand? All I want is darkness.

LUST is lying down on a musty mattress, looking up at the ceiling fan that continues to spin circles until the pattern is ingrained into your mind and you feel the cold of the air conditioner drift down and chill your soul into a block of ice and you yearn, you crave, for someone to come and warm you back up again because you miss the burning hot kisses making trails down the arches of your collarbones and the everlasting feel of hands rubbing their nimble, callused fingers down your entire body, sloping into your neck and your spine and each finger starting to play a soothing melody on the piano keys of your ribs and you miss how lips, wondrous creatures, traced and counted each part of your body, your skin, deeper still into your heart and your soul until the number was lost and had to be recounted again, god, you miss being truly loved and the thought is like the blast of cold air hitting you now and you remember that you can’t have the desires you pleasure and you’ll be left staring at the cracked plaster ceiling, aching for the warmth of last night to return but the space next to you is but a painful reminder of how lust creates a lonely void and makes your skin turn so, so cold until you feel nothing but the wish of being held close.

My body is a civil war, head and heart are captains both, what graceful gore, endured when trapped in the undergrowth, this fight’s unrest does none to calm, my veins tainted with broken solider’s dreams, and the land ravaged with useless holy psalms, because of this all, I’m tearing at the seams, it doesn’t matter who wins this twisted game, for I already know my wicked fate: my soul shall burn to ash and dust upon flame, and laid to rest on hell’s ruby gates.

Do what you must but I will never stop loving you go ahead and steal my eyes away and make me blind but I will never stop seeing you behind my eyelids every night I sleep nor will that stop me from reading your emotions through braille and go ahead shut my ears and make me deaf but I will never stop hearing you nor will my ear ever forget the sound of your voice, the lullaby that lulls me to sleep and go ahead cut out my heart and make me heartless but it will never stop beating nor will it deter me from trying to save you, for you have my heart now and that’s all I wish and go ahead hate me torch all that’s left of me with the flames of your anger but I will never stop, know this now, I will bear you through my blood.

My mother told me all humans were angels. And that scared me. I would ask her: where did their wings go? And she would answer: since birth, our feathers fell one by one from the humanity that was seeping into our bones. I would be sad and she would smile kindly telling me not to worry. We angels were not as bad as they seemed. But what worried me as I grew older was a fear I could’t shake off. We were meant to roam this earth for our match made in heaven. But the thing that terrifies me was that I was left wondering how this angel would break my heart because even if angels were not bad, the world we were placed in was.

I don’t care for rain. even if it is the tears of the sky. I say, let the sky cry. Let its tears cover the earth whole, let it drown away its pain by yelling down at the innocents below with its terrifying, booming voice. Let it build itself a watery grave so deep that no rope could pull it out. Because, if anything, the sky deserves to sob, to cry, to anguish, to despair, to scream, to rage, to feel so empty that no explanation as to why or what will be able to fill it. The sky derives it as much as I did when you left me alone and cold in the rain with only my tears to fill the sky’s lonely void.

Careful, my dear. Because even though love can be bandages, wrapping away the pain and hiding the wounds, you do not let love fool you into believing that it can heal you.

Because once you pull away, you’ll still be bleeding.

Tragedy inspires all of us to become something we were never meant to be and sometimes that can either water the flowers in our minds or cut them up into “he loves me, he loves me not” and sometimes that can either sting our throats with whiskey or dump the contents of that broken bottle down the drain and sometimes that can either decide whether or not we pretend we are meant for the world or for what comes after.

You loved all things paranormal. Back then, I saw how much of a ridiculous notion it was. The idea of things beyond reality were not meant to be loved, but questioned. What you had seen in such things had confused me immensely, but now I realize what you saw. You took these other worldly beauties because they exist without explanation, at odds with the scientific world. They defy the laws that bound us, take what we know and crush it to pieces. They make our world tedious and dull, causing us to open our eyes to better opportunities. I see why you believed and treasured the paranormal. It was more than just ghosts and demons and monsters. It was the wonder of never knowing what was going to happen, it was the excitement of learning more, it was the beauty of always trying to unravel the mysteries. I love that you were bigger than the ordinary human, open to adore the unknown and the mystifying.

Ink jars were the tools she used to write her story. The story other heart ache and the torn pages were the rage and the screams, the sadness and the sobs, the loneliness and the vacancy she felt when she realized how much love had made her a fool.

You still smell like roses. The aroma filling my thoughts as you talk about the adventures you had and the people you met without me, you still smell like the sunflowers. The brightness blinding me as you gleam and glitter while you wonder of a brilliant future without me. You still look at me like azaleas. The color swarming my senses as you sigh and tilt your head, saying goodbye and leave, taking steps to a new place without me. I wish I could uproot my rotten weeds and follow you wherever you go. Sadly, i’m stuck without you.

Every time you asked me to open up, I’d made an excuse not to show you. because if I did, no one, not even you would understand how it felt to do so. Because if you knew i opened up, pried apart my rib cage and opened the flooded rotting of my heart and all the butterflies and moths that gathered there, hiding within my ****** thorns, would finally be free. But I knew that if I did that, all anyone would do is swat and push them away and you wouldn’t catch them to hold dearly to your heart and that’s saddening to know. No one would realize how much I did for them. So the next time you ask me to open up I will say except the same answer, another excuse to hide and keep my butterflies and moths trapped inside.

She is a girl afraid of her own shadow. s=She finds it large and menacing, a threat that will consume her from the outside in. So she stops eating, breathing, living. in hopes that her shadow will go away, but it doesn’t. It grows bigger each day, destroying her humanity. So the girl decides to never eat, never breathe, never live again. In hopes that her shadow will go away, but it doesn’t. To her, the shadow is huge, a monster with sharpened teeth and a sinister voice, whispering dark things that make her fear the evil that lies behind hers the girl follows her rule, the only thing keeping her sane. Never eat, never breathe, never live. All for a hope that her shadow will go away, but it doesn’t. Now she is tired and can’t handle the pain any longer. All her protection, her chains and rope, the shields of bloodied slits, the swords of sharpened bones, are no use. Her skeleton frame falls prey to her dark shadow that had remained the same the entire time; this line, this twig, this stick of a shadow that couldn’t have hurt a fly. She wasn’t afraid of her shadow. No, this girl was afraid of a fear in her mind that wouldn’t go away. In her eyes, she thought the shadow was evil when , in act, it was her own thoughts that protected her. And in the end, fear won. It’s what’s on the inside that counts, after all.