i have never believed in god,
the bible is a series of stanzas,
which i could never translate into meaning.

it is poetry which never made my spine tremble,
usually i can feel when words piece together the fragments of my heart,
like tectonic plates making love underneath the earth's sheets.

and if it doesn't remind me that my body is not just an instrument for respiration,
it is not poetry to me.

if it does not remind me of the first time someone made a church out of my lips,
or the last time someone threw rocks at the stained glass windows of my soul.

if it does not replicate the sensation of falling to my death,
and then being resurrected
as the feeling of adrenaline baptizes my body.

i don't want to hear it.
somehow the prophets have only reminded me of the home where my childhood is buried in the backyard.
a breeding space for loneliness.

i have always wished on stars,
and prayed to the moon,
because at least for eight hours of the day,  i can see them.

at least i know they're actually there,
my life has been a series of conversations with walls,
i've been on hold for twenty years.

this life has showed me enough of building walls,
and how to make graveyards
and abandoned buildings out of my own bones.

i've spent enough time sipping wine,
and breaking apart my insides,
and somehow still making it look like a celebration,
isn't that what people do at church anyway?

instead i construct stanzas out of my pain,
i architect the universe into a church because
rain and holy water taste the same to me,
except the rain does not taste like my ex-lovers lies burning the back of my throat.

i refuse to let more strangers into my life,
just to remind me that my voice has never been loud enough,
that a scream is just a sound when no one is listening.

what kind of god sacrifices his own son,
my father sacrificed his daughter's sanity for the bottle,
and there isn't a scripture
that can make that story hurt any less.

there isn't a god that can precipitate the salt from my wounds,
but the moon is a streetlight in a darkened alleyway,
it is a lighthouse in a turbulent sea of sorrow.

so yes i worship the stars.
because all these years they still remind me that,
there is beauty in burning,
that i do not have to wait around to be saved,

and the moon is the only god i will ever need because
it reminds me that i have already saved myself,
every day.

I see your eyes in the birth of spring,
the ivy lurking in the shadows,
in the glasses of wine I have sipped to try and forget;
that grapes descended from vines
I could have pulled from your irises;
the same vines I pulled and tried to swing to sanctuary,
it was all an illusion
just as
the way the flowers and willow trees firmly secured in the earth,
have swayed me to believe
the verdant tint of your existence,
the capsule of your being,
is something which should be envied.

the first cut is the deepest,
I’ve made two rotations around the sun,
since I buried your bones in the graveyard
next to the tree,
where the name of every person I have lost is carved,
except that tree is my heart,
and there are so many slits,
I’m surprised it’s rhythm still echoes across this earth,
I wish I knew a love that did not involve
my body throwing itself off the deep end,
in the presence of souls who do not know how to swim,
hoping love would be enough to magnetize their soul to follow mine,
maybe he just didn’t want to drown,
my love has that effect on people,
it is suffocating,
It is a strain of oxygen that will intoxicate your lungs,
It will get you so high,
you’ll start to see the future,
it’ll start to look more and more like my bones,
until my palms tell you my life line is fading faster
than the moon blurring into the horizon line come morning.
The future is someone I put to rest years ago,
only to realize that it’s ghost has been coming back to haunt me for years,
In search of the person who could finally resurrect her,
and I think she thought he was the one,
he made me forget her initials were even carved into that tree,
that she wasn’t still breathing,
he made me feel like she was within my reach,
that I could pull her by threads from the earth and bring her back to life,
but depression infected my body,
and I have been changing in shape every day,
like clay in the hands of a sculptor,
my silhouette has been transformed into so many alternate forms,
that over time,
he forgot who he fell in love with,
convinced himself that person was never coming back.
he reached that point in his intoxication where he craved sobriety,
like he was seconds away from being pulled by his veins to the depths of hell,
could feel the flames against his skin.
he got too high and maybe I did too,
but the difference is my instinct is always to jump from mountains,
and to sink in oceans,
I do not know how to consistently stay in one place,
my pain is like gravity,
it always pulls me back down,
his love was like watching the sun reflect on it’s light,
after days of rain,
except I was the sun,
hidden behind the rain which my clouded head brought upon his earth,
when all the serotonin evaporated into the sky,
i stared at the mess I made after the storm,
I felt guilty about my light,
didn’t feel worthy of it,
I saw my reflection,
In puddles,
riverbanks,
I didn’t recognize the person staring back at me,
he told me that he didn’t either,
I don’t blame him for jumping,
to escape the storm,
but the difference between him and I,
is if I jump,
I only become more deeply immersed in myself,
I jump into oceans of my own depression’s precipitation,
baptize myself in the backsplash.
my best skill has always been breaking my own heart,
taking an axe to it’s trunk,
every time I feel the ground shake,
everything always has to be on my own terms,
I won’t let the storm rip it’s roots from the earth,
I’ll do it myself,
I am an artist,
an artist in sculpting my own demise,
I can’t differentiate my palms from the storm anymore,
can’t separate the clouds from the sun,
the past from the present,
love from the sensation of dying,
with every name comes more blood,
I fall but don’t know it until my bones have already hit the pavement,
maybe I never really stood up after the first time,
I put you to rest,
and your ghost still haunts me from afar,
as I watch someone else inject you with helium,
pull you back up,
from where I left you to die.

of all the months,
february leaves a sour taste in my mouth,
like I’m choking on all the love that isn’t in the air,
tasting the blood against my tongue,
of all the people I have put to rest,
for trying to take pieces of me,
just to feel more whole themselves,
jokes on them,
missing pieces from a puzzle,
aren’t really that valuable when you never had a whole set to begin with.
I never believed them when they said we need love to survive,
love is not the light my body thirsts for,
when spring comes around,
i will bloom as long as that stream flows back to my veins,
as long as the sun radiates against my spine,
and that’s the thing,
love is never promised,
I don’t know how long it’ll be here,
or when it’s coming back,
and I refuse to stent my growth in it’s absence,
I’ve spent enough time wilting away waiting for it to come back,
without even realizing I don’t even know what it looks like,
or how it feels to be in it’s presence,
but I imagine it’s a lot like picking the petals off daisies,
praying for answers,
Waiting,
it does not enforce my growth,
If anything it has only taken it away.

as if love is something we should celebrate,
maybe if we stopped devoting a single day to it,
one day to flaunt all the warmth we hold in our hearts,
we wouldn’t feel so cold every other day,
maybe It’d mean more all other three hundred and sixty four days,
maybe we’d be more willing to show it everyday,
If we weren’t all so afraid to fall in love,
If being in it,
didn’t mean at some point we know we’re going to hit the ground,
besides,
what’s one day in a lifetime of goodbyes,
a lifetime of using sidewalk concrete to conceal,
what we all know is irreparably broken at it’s core.
but all twenty eight days,
not just the 14th,
make me feel like I’m at a funeral,
one I have no place being at,
mourning all the love I’ve let slip through the spaces of my palms,
how does one mourn what they never had in the first place,
being in love makes me feel like I’m at a poker table,
surrounded by people who are so willing to play their cards,
poker faces strong,
all their money on the table,
waiting around to lose,
I don’t belong here,
I never had any love I was willing to put on the line anyway,
I fold.

and my love is like the 29th of february,
sure it comes around every now and then,
but what difference does it’s absence make.
february is still february without that one day,
I wonder if february mourns that twenty ninth day,
sees her in a hotel bar every four years,
goes home,
remembers what it’s like to have that piece of himself back,
only to spend the next three years spitting it back out,
because he’s learned how to exist without her,
learnt to live with being incomplete,
learnt to make his heart feel whole without it,
maybe I was never whole to begin with,
but now I feel like I’m always digging for the gold in other people,
because everyone I have ever loved has stolen the wealth I held so recklessly in my ribcage,
I’m hesitant to love,
because my heart is coated with rust
in memory of all the pieces of myself which I have given away,
And I’m scared one of these days it’s beat will just stop,
like an overworked machine,
whose gears have spun themselves into brokenness,
that repairs will never truly fix.
or maybe it already has,
I’ve spent so much time looking for the pieces of myself I have lost in other people,
trying to  replace the missing spaces in the stained glass windows of my soul,
please do not come to pray here,
for the wind is circulating between the slits of my heart’s cracks,
It is frigid,
like the wind circulating in February’s palms
love has done to me what this earth has done to him,
keeps handing me cards which make me feel like I am going to win those pieces of myself back,
only to realize that those pieces aren’t even mine anymore,
they’re gone.
yeah,
I fold.

I live my life at the bottom,
of the pill bottle;
of the wine bottle;
of the sinking ship that is my life.
just to feel on top for a minute.

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.