i talk about love with my eyes closed,
talk about it with my teeth clenched,
the truth slipping between the cracks of my teeth,
like your fingers through the spaces of my hands,
because I’ve been in love so many times,
I’m running out of hands to count on,
I’m running out of thread to sew the pieces back together,
because what has love ever done for anyone anyway,
I’ve been guilty of it’s crime too many times.
love:
capital punishment without the promise of a final date,
and believe me, I’ve been waiting for it.
I’m still serving time for the last time I tripped on someone’s eyes and landed on my dignity,
bruised up my knees,
still cry whenever I witness what spring does to willow trees,
every time the snow feels like her time is up,
and she sacrifices herself to the sun,
seeps into hell,
just so all of the roses can bloom once more.
but look at what love has done to me,
left me on the end of the line,
waiting for a voice that I know is never coming,
and the doctors keep telling me that my new heart is coming,
and they also said summer is coming,
yet I have been trapped in this eternal winter for what seems like years.
I’m not even sure there’s anything to replace,
I’m not sure I ever had one in the first place,
my ribcage swears of her presence,
but for all I know there’s a clock ticking against my chest
like the thunder against the sky,
counting down the minutes I have left
until my body makes one with the sky,
or the ground,
I don’t care anymore;
heaven or hell,
where ever my soul gravitates when this pain bids farewell,
I hope that when I'm there
love is nothing more than an urban legend,
a myth,
and maybe that’s all it is now,
because the first time I ever saw love she was laying on the bathroom floor,
her arms widespread like she wasn’t afraid to fly,
my father was in the other room making a commitment to the bible,
making a commitment to the bottle,
a commitment to anything that would temporarily make the bridge between life and death feel within arms reach,
and that’s what love does to people,
it makes you feel like heaven is real because you've touched it,
but when it ends,
and just like you and me;
it will end,
it transforms your bones into a playground for the devil,
I feel him running around most nights,
swinging around trying to get as close to heaven as he can,
except heaven is in my head,
and there are no angels which exist on its surface,
and you know what I can’t say I blame him,
or anyone who swallows too many pills just to feel a little closer to heaven.
who sips away at a bottle just to feel like they’re not the only one who’s empty inside.
and my heart feels for the snow,
every time winter leaves,
she just fades away,
like she was never there in the first place,
maybe the roses are the only ones who knew of the warmth beyond those thick layers of ice,
because she died for them,
and,
I hope they all knew of the fire lit behind the cold wall I built up,
after I got tired of people trying to blow it out,
and maybe I’m not resentful of love,
I’m resentful of the tarot cards god has pulled for me,
I’m resentful of her ending,
and her resurrection,
the heartache of those who are devoted to Christ,
I cannot imagine.
I let the snowflakes swirl around the rooms,
throughout my body,
warm myself on the small flame burning in my ribcage,
until i am no longer alone,
and the roses burst through winters flesh,
and introduce my knees to the pavement,
alike every other time,
I will sit and wait,
just to watch them die again,
and at least I know that cycle is still coming,
and maybe the hardest thing about falling in love
is not knowing when,
or how much time I have left with the roses.

your body is a temple,
they tell me,
but still I do not eat.
it is a temple which I do not pray to,
it is a temple where my insides pray for food,
where my mind prays to feel something,
anything.
so I feed it anything that will plant hedges in my mind,
to shadow the burning house that it has become,
so no one notices and calls for help,
even if only for a few minutes,
but I do not feed it anything which will allow my body to grow,
I have cut down all the trees,
even though oxygen is scarce,
there are factories pumping smoke throughout me,
pollution is heavy,
as heavy as my body feels most nights,
weighing down the earth,
and I am only noticing now,
how hard it has become to breathe.

i walk around like everyone around me has a death wish,
my teeth clenched,
my smile on defence mode,
i ain't no vulnerable *****,
but that's a lie I have spent years trying to convince myself,
because if I don't give anyone the chance to set off dynamite in my ribcage,
they never will.
my heart has enough cracks in it,
I can feel the cold air circulating inside of every slit,
but like every person I have ever come to know,
it's just passing through.
nothing is permanent,
but these scars have been here for so long,
and I'm starting to feel like being mentally ill really is a death sentence,
depression is a criminal who takes everything you have left,
it kills you,
but there will be no trial.
it leaves you alone, cold in the streets,
holding on to nothing but your self respect,
which is as faint as my life line feels,
we are all dying,
I am dying,
but the problem is I already feel dead.
I have spent my whole life preparing for this loneliness.

mum taught me that people come and go,
i've seen her on her knees enough times,
becoming a puppet to a ventriloquist self esteem
pulling on every string
except the ones that could make those men come back.
she taught me to live life like you've got winter electrifying throughout your body,
be cold, be dull.
don't you ever fall in love,
those brown eyes and thick lips ain't ****,
every sentence brave enough to push through those teeth,
they don't mean anything to anyone,
the artist who painted my bones on this earth,
grinded my bones into gun powder,
which I use to shoot myself in the chest
every time someone tells me I'm beautiful.
now my sentences are shy,
they're fragile,
they are innocent felons locked behind the bars that are my teeth,
screaming inside the penitentiary of my mouth,
but still I swallow them.
still I will never look anyone in the eyes,
because I'm afraid they'll see every nightmare tucked behind my irises.
I don't give anyone the chance to fear me,
I've spent enough time fearing myself.

dad taught me about absence,
which is why I've learned to make the empty side of my bed feel full,
how I've learned to stop missing the pieces of myself I lost so long ago,
how to make homes out of every person i meet,
because he destroyed the only home I ever knew,
what's the point,
he could never make up his mind if i was worth it,
what's a home if you're never sure who's coming back to it,
but i know I am always coming back to every person I have made homes out of,
because i put every possession I own into them,
I heat their walls with all the warmth left in my heart,
I furnish their rooms with my pain that I have learned to transform into something which comforts others,
but they always leave without giving my possessions back,
and I'm still walking around this earth wondering why the **** I am so empty inside.
they always leave because my body is a graveyard to a dead child,
because underneath all this flesh is a dead body,
blood seeping through all seven layers of skin,
I wonder if people can smell the death when they look at me
my father killed three people in his lifetime,
and only two of them got justice,
i wasn't that lucky.

I have always tried so hard to not let this world turn my body into stone,
I was a river flowing through this earth,
fluid, careless.
I was a child,
ready to surrender my heart to any stranger,
now I keep that ***** locked up,
just like my tongue.
I have always been hypersensitive to feeling,
this world is not optimized for my heart,
so in a cell, it will stay.
I mean I've seen enough hospitals in my life,
and their solution to my pain is always to lock it up,
because i'm a danger to myself,
i'm a danger to other people,
like my emotions are sociopathic serial killers,
and I am unstable because I can't keep them locked up,
yet my whole life I have been taught to let them roam freely like a stream,
when they are tsunamis erupting inside of me,
killing me.

they are toxic to my insides,
we were all born dying,
and my head is only speeding up the process.
but my emotions are always just a symptom of being unstable,
and not human.
they do not come in waves,
they come in hurricanes,
they destroy everything I once had,
so I swallow them,
ignoring the destruction occurring inside of me,
and here I will be, suffering,
tasting the pain lingering on my tongue,
trying to spit it out,
but my teeth are thick metal bars,
my pain is still doing time,
hungry to scream out everything these bones have ever felt,
but my teeth stay clenched,
don't you say anything about that child,
don't you even pretend that it's there,
everyone will see the weakness in your eyes,
and they will run.

but I am in pain,
and still I pretend like I'm bigger than them,
walking around like I don't need anyone,
forever trying to clean up the blood pouring out of the scars this life has left on my body,
just so rhat no one flees in fear,
even though I'm drowning in it,
be happy you had the privilege to run,
I was never that lucky.

i am in a complicated relationship with my depression
she is as cold as houses with old doorways and broken windows.
our love is not a fairytale.
It is a ghost story.

i never can quite get close enough to her, but I can't let go
without her, I am that same house but with no furniture
without her;  I am a garden with nothing to harvest:
an indigo night sky with no stars.

she doesn't let me leave,
other people are loaded guns to her,
and she can't let their gaze meet mine
they are gypsies,
and she's afraid I'm going to see the future in their irises.
a future where I know love as more than just the concrete used to fill the sidewalk that is my broken heart.

our relationship is a burning house,
it is empty wine bottles,
and sleepless nights.
she is drought in summer,
and forest fires in autumn.
nothing can grow in the soil of my soul anymore.
there is nothing beautiful left.

i have nightmares about bridges burning a lot,
probably because the last one i burned killed all my elation
i still think of you everyday,
your face still brings me to my knees,
i can feel your presence in every room,
because the bullets intrude my anatomy every time you even glance at me.
even if I’m not looking back.

love has always been a hollow ribcage for me,
a burned down church,
that I always went back to to pray to,
only to be brought to my knees by it’s absence,
every single time.
all I knew about love was that it was violent,
that it made people into glass,
that it broke people like wrecking ***** against buildings
and there I was for years waiting for you to come and destroy me just like every time my father walked out that door.
but you never did.
instead you planted flowers in a garden that had been barren for years,
you ended the winter that was electrifying throughout me,
you taught me that maybe my insides weren’t so hollow,
because my heartbeat felt like more than just the sound of spoons clinking together to remind me that it was time to eat away at my own insides again.

but you’re gone,
and here I am feeding away at my insides again,
except there is nothing left for me to destroy,
my body is a graveyard.
and maybe love does turn you into glass,
because every time you speak to me,
my insides shatter like fine china in tight palms,
you made me feel like more than just a felon,
that my hands were fluent in something beyond destruction,
but when you kept asking me to come back,
i threw rocks at my own windows,
because it hurt so much to have to walk away,
i painted my own self image against your brain,
so that you wouldn’t see me as that girl that turned your body into melted honey,
you’d see me for the demons chanting in the back of my head.
and I guess it worked,
because you told me you do not love me anymore,
i wonder if you hung that painting in your bedroom.
saw it every morning and finally became too disturbed that you put me to rest.
or maybe you got tired of the girl who cried wolf,
i mean isn’t that why you left in the first place?

you told me you felt lost after i left,
and here I am, I caught your illness.
i would have done anything to try and recreate how you made me feel,
but just like any person who tries to recreate Picasso or Monet
it’s never quite as good the second time
or third,
or fourth,
sure the cigarettes burn like the way the memory of your flesh burns against my mind,
but it hurts less.
so I smoke a pack a day, swallowing the smoke like I’ve learned to swallow my pride,
but then it just reminds me of the puff of smoke I see every time you walk away from my bones.
i become a sad child again,
there is nothing more devastating than doorways for me.
but I want you to know that I woke up this morning,
and there was sunlight slipping through the cracks of the earth,
earth that has been grey for too long,
your ghost did not slip through my walls,
the sound of your voice does not crack at my sidewalks anymore.

my insides are no longer hollow.
there are daisies blooming,
in my ribcage,
where there is also a city i have built around all the bridges i have burned,
including ours,
you told me you do not want me anymore,
you have told the world of my madness,
used my painting as a flag for your newly built town.
just know that i am still standing.
you have not broken me,
she has not broken me,
i was whole before you,
and i am whole now.
do not tell me you have found crystals mining through someone else’s anatomy,
don’t tell me you’re finally healed,
remember,
it’s never quite as good the second time.
or the third,
or the fourth.

your portrait was painted in chalk on the sidewalks of my life,
but it rained yesterday,
and you are gone,
except it did not bring me to my knees,
i am not mourning it's disappearance,
i am mourning your losses,
you have settled for crystals,
and let gold slip through your fingers,
i have used your bones to build myself up,
instead of beating myself down.
they say the first cut is the deepest,
but i am done bleeding.

I have learned that my depression is like doing everything with gloves on.
It makes anything so much harder,
still possible,
but not even worth it.

my therapist keeps telling me to stop thinking in black and white,
she keeps saying that there is grey in
between the night sky
and the ivory sheets of snow folded into the earth,
but what she doesn't understand is that grey isn't a stranger to me,
my life has been seeing my surroundings go up in smoke,
I see in thunderstorms,
my own anatomy is a hurricane staring back at me in the mirror,
before it becomes shattered glass planted in the garden of the floor,
I harvest my own blood.

I am always trying to put the pieces back together,
as if recovery is a destination on a map
but every time I become frustrated,
because my palms are on fire and the glass fragments are laced with gasoline.
I just break them up some more,
until they are grains of sand falling through my fingers.
I can't tell the difference between my hands and an open flame anymore.

I constantly am torn between living and dying,
because every day another forest becomes a graveyard,
every day the sky starts to look more like an emergency exit,
every day the ground starts to feel more like home,
because everything around me is already burning,
but I have always loved mystery and my palms are covered in my own blood,
I am the only suspect in this story,
and I will never take the blame for my own self destruction.
every other culprit's blood and fingerprints have seeped into my skin.
it has become part of me,
there will be no justice.

I am still looking for the clues to weave together the fabrics of my own ******,
where it all began,
who pulled the trigger first,
every other event has just been salt on these wounds,
I have chosen not to address.
but my therapist also told me to stop living in the past,
it's over,
but it doesn't feel over,
I am still a suffering child,
I have not grown out of my pain.

maybe that's part of the problem,
I keep thinking that I'm going to grow out of this,
when the reality is that over time, my body will only shift in shape to wear it better.
and some days, it is going to be bigger than me;
it will become me until I am drowning in it's violent tide.
other times I am going to do to it what it has done to me;
make it feel so small so that I can break it in my palms.

I often feel like this is a death sentence
but I am not dead yet.
and I still have other mysteries to solve,
like how to turn greyness into home,
how to lock up the past, so he stops coming back to my head like he owns the place.
how to turn these gloves into armour so that I can
grasp my life by the throat,
even with gloves on.

you speak about love as if it's the sky,
you look to it for answers,
to cure that hole in your chest.
do not walk around my block looking for the person who shot you when the gun was in your hands this whole time.

do not construct a haunted house out of my being
and tell the world i hexed you with my ignorance.
when you have been the ghost living in my hollow insides.
ready to commit ****** with your bare hands clenched around my neck.
you made the whole town watch,
fear drenched in the air,
so they would never come back without tasting those memories like blood in the back of their mouths.

i wonder if you knowing my insides were hollow made it easier for you to take up vacancy in my soul.
but you made everything i am into a two star motel room,
tore apart the room and the fines are still lingering in the air like you never touched me in the first place.

you thirsted on my blood like a tree's veins thirsting on the rains tears,
like you needed it to survive.
but don't you forget, my body was a church  before you let your ****** palms dance on the surface of my flesh,
and never cleaned up the mess.

so let your tongue vibrate against the roof of your mouth,
telling empty lies about
the reason you're bleeding.
you say you cut your hands on the broken glass fragments of my existence,
when you were the one who shot at every window i had left.