there's a house at the
corner of misery boulevard,
and heartbreak avenue,
that i call home.
& i can't count on my left hand
how many times,
those sand tinted rooms
with decaying light bulbs
have overheard
through paper walls,
the sound of that rose coloured capsule
embracing the floor,
only to find itself in pieces.
my mother always
hid that in a cage,
locked tight.
never did that stop my father
from finding the key,
she always slipped under the door mat.
like she wanted him to find it.
and you could hear it shatter,
into glass fragments,
that she was always left to clean up
by herself.
because he never stayed
to watch her pick up the pieces,
he didn't want to cut his life line
on her fragmented heart.
- or the time when my mother,
stained my ear drums,
and sold residence to a ghost
who now haunts the walls of my mind,
with words,
she'll claim her tongue never dismissed.
but ten years later,
and i still think i'm that painting,
in monochromatic shades,
that no one ever bothers
to glance at.
when they're gliding
down a vacant hallway.
more empty than the emotion
in this house.
but i still call it home,
because the walls have been
infected with sadness,
because there aren't enough vitamins,
to cure all this sickness,
released through
hatred hymns.
but those melancholy rhythms,
can't compete with the
floorboards that still sing me to sleep,
or the elation that fills
my lungs when i breathe,
because this house
still smells like mourning
the old flames,
from vanilla candle wicks
my ninth birthday knew so well.
& yes, there is no place
that sends fragile shivers
down my spine
when crossing the paths
of gloomy road,
and loathing crescent
but this is home,
this house is just like the cerulean tide,
because it always finds a way to
pull me back to shore.
& then i met you,
promenading down
hope street,
making empty prayers
to god
with a dry tongue and
waterlogged eyes.
another dawn spent
searching for the light -
in coffee shop windows
or even the stars.
something -
to guide me home.
and you taught me that
home isn't always a place,
you can find on a map.
sometimes,
it's two eyes and a heart beat.
it's love entangled words,
uttered through a pair of crimson lips.
& you showed me,
that ruby tinted vases,
look best when
they're not placed on shelves,
but rather granted as gifts,
sealed in envelopes,
with kisses painted
in scarlet lipstick.
& ghosts can be put to sleep,
by a lullaby,
you whispered in my ear
seven times a day.
i love you
has a ring to it,
but it's been six months and
that ghost sold his house,
to a boy who
told me i'm a composition
of colours.
that an artist painted me
in gold, because he sees it in
my eyes when i smile.
- i swear to god,
four walls and a front door,
build a house,
you'll always turn to
when the sky's crying, or when
you tear your jeans
on the wire fence
down the road.
and that boy
who is a composition of wonder,
possesses no door,
and the only window,
is the amber iris
that feels like the ocean
when he looks at me.
because,
he's just like the tide.
& i can still smell vanilla every time
i kiss him.

• it's not that i don't love you
it's that when i was six, my mothers eyes were verdant fields illuminated by her laughter.
it's that my father came home that night, whiskey absorbed into his tongue, lavender lingering on his skin, the last two buttons of his shirt still undone.
it's that i always thought it was a tree branch caressing the windowpane at 2am.
when she was crying to the walls for help.
it's just that when he left, she started sleeping with the light on,
and her eyes died with winter's approach.
when they were together, her skin was a canvas for violet hues that burned like gin against your throat so she could never hug me.
it's that, last november when they healed, she painted them again - but this time in red.
it's that my mother didn't wear lavender.

• it's not that i don't love you
it's that my older sister doesn't leave her bedroom. i wonder if she misses the sunlight, or maybe if that's the problem.
it's that she told me that if people were colours he'd be red.
because she sees him in the sky when it sets.
and in the leaves that have been kissed by autumn.
it's that it's been a year, since she wrote that letter with scribbled letters and scattered thoughts,
talking about the way he said her smile reminded him of old movies,
and cotton candy.
and that she still loved him.
it's that last summer she went outside to feel his presence,
in the graveyard by the river - accompanied with lost lovers and broken hearts.
and it's that she came home and took a blade to her left wrist - heartbreak oceans leaving the sink painted scarlet.
it's that when the doctor asked her why she did it, she replied with:
"i forgot what red looked like."

• it's not that i don't love you
it's that once, my therapist told me about his wife.
and that she left him because her heart didn't beat for him anymore.
it's that when i told him my cat ran away last week
he smiled gently but with his eyes,
and replied, "don't worry, she's coming back."
like he had recited that phrase to himself a thousand times this week,
it's that i saw hope peck him on the cheek,
and ignite his eyes,
it's that i know they did that when she laughed like honey was melting into her tongue, or when she told him she loved the way his right eye was more green than the left.
it's just that, during my last visit,
he asked about my cat again,
and i had to tell him, "it's been months, i don't think she's coming home."
it's that he cried sapphire pools of misery,
because his eyes told me
he knew she wasn't.

it's not that i don't love you
*it's that i do

when I say last year I hit an all time low,
I mean that I spent two hundred and eighty nine days without sunlight,
I’ve never known a rose to grow immersed in eternal night -
auctioned off my heart for the gift of sight,
I wonder how long I’ve lived my life blinded by the rose tinted glass?
false love will have you struggling to distinguish between gold and brass.
I draw out the sequence.
your palms met her flesh,
my reflection in the mirror is reduced to ash.
I feel my heart hit the floor,
blood stains in the carpet - proof that love does not live here anymore
next time just wrap them around my neck,
I get the same hand of cards
out of every single deck.
from love,
suffocating, choking,
that is the only sensation I have come to expect,
you know that better than me,
extinguished every fire set to your trees,
don’t you remember?
she left everything around you to burn,
choked on all the smoke,
still you fixated on all the ember,
if this body was ever not hollow,
I wouldn’t remember.
two hundred and eighty nine days,
I spent treading in the shallow,
moulded my existence out of clay just to fill another persons shadow.

I’ve spent twenty three years at war,
so when he looks at me,
he doesn’t ask why I haven’t gotten up off the floor,
doesn’t know that I’ve played this game before,
and I choose paper,
specifically the paper I used to write my first poem,
the piece of paper where I drew love out in hieroglyphics,
carved constellations into the page,
I think I first learned to make pain sound beautiful when I took your broken fragments and built a church with my bare palms,
I think it was around the time
I picked up the pen,
so I haven’t picked one up since.
they always say it’s such a shame,
but love to me is a shattered domain,
and this world is still ill prepared to swallow the pain.
decoding my feelings,
I’ve spent a lifetime baptized in shame.

I choose paper,
specifically the paper that declared my parents love,
and the one 12 years later that made the former a will that left me in possession of a starless sky,
an enigma, but still I never asked why.
left me in possession of all these matches,
with nothing to burn but my own flesh,
from what I’ve learned from love, I wouldn’t expect anything less.
there isn’t a map on the surface of this earth that could tell you where love lives in this body,
and if there was I’d use it as a my weapon in this game.
strike a match to its skin,
so even if there was,
you’d never be able to find it again.
put its ashes in a frame,
trust me,
no pair of scissors will ever damage your life quite the same.

I choose paper,
specifically the anatomy of every card sent to me with love,
because each one was as empty as the wine bottles in my closet,
each name signed marks a grave where I buried a part of me,
nailed myself to the cross,
just so other people could find meaning in my pain.
oh to be a saviour for the shattered,
still over and over again,
I found my heart slain.
I still don’t understand what there was to gain,
told that story on a 8.5x11 sheet,
and I’ve never seen a rock carry the same amount of defeat.

rock, paper, scissors
I explain this game resembles my insides, broken at its core.
rock, paper, scissors
like clockwork,my opponent heads for the door.
rock, paper, scissors,
don’t worry, from my eyes, you’ll never catch a drop pour.
I told you,
I’ve lost this game one too many times before.

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.

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.

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 love you.
and no i don't mean,
i love you, like i'm trying to make empty conversation.
more vacant than the mailbox of the widow next door,
who hasn't left the house in eight years because the sunlight's embrace still feels like his.
i've never been one for small talk.

i love you
and no i don't mean,
i love you - like it's february 14th and i'm thirsty for someone to tell me i'm beautiful,
so i'd sell my soul to you
and stain your bitter lips with my name.

"i love you"
but you won't call me back next week
because i gazed in to your eyes like you were oxygen and i was struggling to breathe.
rather than you were a poem painted across the sky
that i was dying to read.
an excited grin flirting with my rosy lips, entangled with elation.

i mean *i love you
like my eyes become the north star when you laugh,
i see your face etched between the stanzas of love poems,
and i hear your voice in the wind's autumn serenade.

i mean i love you
like i'm a fifty year old alcoholic with wine stains on my carpet
and i'd still choose you over that bottle of liquid elation in the cabinet.
here i am. stumbling on my words,
choking on the poetry weaved into your smile.

and "i love you" -
the sun's fiery kiss against my skin
reminds me of yours.
and when my bones age, and your presence fades into the horizon like daytime's end.
your absence will burn like cherry wine flirting in the back of my throat.
i may fear sunlight too.

i love you.

                                               (m.c.)

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.

there's always been something poetic in how you glide across a room -
like a butterfly with a kaleidoscope anatomy, so beautiful yet so shy.

in how you laugh like you've never had despair knock on your door at 1a.m. and ask to see the ghosts that haunt the locked doors in the folded creases of your home - with signs labelled, "keep out."

in how they write love stories less romantic than your eyes, and how they kiss me from across busy intersections, and crowded rooms with empty souls.

in how every time your lungs are embraced by elation's vapour, your eyes are crimson like a sky set to flames and you smile gently like despair is but a word in a dictionary - one that will forever be a stranger to your sweet disposition

there are infinite stanzas folded within every corner of your anatomy, sprawled across lined paper in the midnight sky's blood and sealed in white envelopes.

and if sadness ever knocks on your door on a quiet september night. and asks to go inside that locked door at the end of the hallway that's entangled with ghosts that haunt the blank walls. the room that you avoid every lonely morning because you've never been fond of the dark or the frigid air, and least of all - ghosts, that you thought only existed in the pages of books.

if sadness ever knocks on your door with her charming eyes that seem to unlock the doors without question.

i will sit by your bedside, in a quiet room with the walls painted in blue,  and the folded edges of your sheets kissing my skin. and i will open every envelope, without leaving a tear - just so you can hear each sentence as it is dismissed from my crimson lips.*


(m.c)

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.

they say that after awhile,
words start to lose their meaning.
"i love you"
"i'm sorry"
"i'm sober."

you told us that you've been sober for four years,
and that statement was more empty than the glass bottles in your closet.
more empty,
than the pill bottles in my dresser drawer.

my mom never looks me in the eyes,
i think it's because if she did it would make her feel like he never left,
she says i'm just like him,
that the reason my body is a tornado on fire circulating around this earth
is because i was genetically predisposed to disaster.

if only she knew,
that i swallow pills because the line between intoxication and love
becomes as blurry
as his vision after trading places with the bottle,
that i understand the comfort of not being the only thing that's empty at the table.

sometimes my heart feels like it's a volcano,
ready to erupt out of my chest,
like there is lava in my bloodstream.
some days the pills make me feel like i'm playing a game of russian roulette,
except the possibility of death has never been enough for the addict to change.

probably because when they're sober the only thing they want more than to be high is to be dead.
and maybe being farther away from the ground
distracts them from the fact
that they are walking on the surface of their deathbeds.

and no, i am not scared to die,
i am scared that i will live long enough to follow his legacy,
that the only time i will ever feel love is when my body surrenders to the bottle.
that i will only know love as the shadow casted by intoxication.
that one day i will spin out of control,
and set flame to everyone i love.

mom,
"i love you,"
"i'm sorry,"
"i'm sober,"
except she has played this game of two truths and a lie before.

i often find myself
wandering in the way you say
"i love you," with
loose cherry lips, and bright caramel eyes.
- finding energy in your caffeine flavored irises,
and getting lost in the syllables of your laughter
because i'm so used
to sleep-deprived voices
talking about how it hasn't rained in days,
asking empty questions
about my future -
having to gaze into my crystal ball,
and responding with
"my future is painted in watercolor"
because i've been combining the pale pigments
with my tears.
my whole existence has been
a mystery -
trying to merge my mother's distaste
for my soul, and my father's footprints
out the front door
so that maybe i could see a clear image
in the mirror.
but every edge has always been a blur -
every glance has always been
an unfocused image trying to
find the focal point in a single
strand of grass -
trying to find purpose in the horizon line.
trying to silence all the noise -
i can still feel the frigid breeze
when he walked away,
i can still hear her hard words
from pursed lips talking about
how she sees him in the way I
move across a room.
i've always been the
answer to every tear she's ever shed.
so i'm sorry,
if i follow you across every sidewalk,
and can't resist your exothermic skin
that amplifies your heart beat
like a song i can't get out of my head.
but in seventeen years,
i have heard my name so many times,
but you were the first person
to make me feel like it
was worth something.
you were the first person i got so high off of,
that i could finally see straight.

There are parts of me I have yet to become acquaintances with,
Flesh,
I have never stroked with my fingertips
Like the sinner does when he's lonely and makes the Holy Bible his lover.
A bible that only sees the light when his world is crimson, going down in flames.
I can feel the presence of opaque shadows lingering in my head,
The fog is still too thick to see the edges of his face,
But the smell of whiskey still brings me to my knees
Like the sinner who sees scarlet flames every time he looks at his palms.
He reserves his Sundays for prayer.
My reality is seven-thousand ghosts chanting the same sermon against the walls of my anatomy, begging God for truth.
Pressing against every curve, sending shivers up my spine because it strikes a harp I've heard before.
White wallpaper, silent whispers, a ripe peach.
The clock on the wall strikes one-twenty-seven, the moon cries for help.
The sinner has just come home.
Whiskey entangled sentences, blurry vision, loose hands.
In the shadows, his palms reach for change in the fountain of youth.
After all these years, I'm still picking up the dimes he dropped on the sidewalks of my life.
I see orange in stranger's irises,
My surroundings become dark, humid spring days whenever I smell whiskey.

I wonder if he used it to set flames to my anatomy.
I don't know how to extinguish all of this smoke, but I can't see straight, I'm choking on all of the memories faded into the monochromatic sky.
I wonder if there's a prayer in the bible that paints my face across the canvas of his mind.
I'm still picking up the glass fragments of this shattered life.
Cutting my hands while putting the mirror back together.
Trying to see into myself, into the sad caramel eyes staring back at me.
Thick smoke, crimson flames, shadows dancing.
Ghosts screaming, blurry vision, dimes scattered across the floor.
I fear for the day all these faded sins become friends of mine.

his eyes are the colour of coffee,
-warm and romantic
when he looks at me,
i feel like i'm looking into the window of a coffee shop.
the walls painted in mahogany.
and coffee stains.
he looks at me with caffeine weaved into his eyelashes
energy lingers within his iris.
my frail hands tremble
my eyes light up with the exchange of energy through lovers glances.
i haven't slept in days

his lips are crimson like wine,
and they bleed into mine like ink does to a page -
slowly but deeply.
scarlet kisses between hopeless romantics,
entangled with flames.
my throat is an inferno.
burning as his tongue seduces mine in,
the cave where my laughter hides on gloomy afternoons.
my lips are numb like lonely palms are when autumn decays,
and all i can taste is a bittersweet elation,
like blood as it lingers in your mouth.
i'm drunk again

and his arms built a house,
inside of me.
a quaint bungalow with the walls tinted ivory,
the smell of vanilla mingling with oxygen fresh in the air,
a house that feels like singing birthday candles to sleep,
and your first kiss.
the house you return to when,
your hands are rosy with winter absorbed into your lifeline.
it's the house that you can't stop coming back to,
because it feels like christmas, even in june.
and no matter how hard you try,
you can't wash away the love signed by;
wine spills and laughter absorbed into the carpet.
when he touched me:
he built a house with his hands,
and made it feel like home

*i've never been so homesick.

i've searched for your love on
every sidewalk curb.
waltzed along empty roads at midnight.
acquainted with the candle light
instilled within street lamps.
begging ever stranger for pocket change,
they never had.
and i've danced with wine,
fading into my cherry lips
the bitter taste flirting in the back of my throat.
until my mind was scattered in pieces
i threw across the bathroom floor,
but didn't bother to pick up the
next morning.
& i never found it,
eight years later and your love
is like waiting for snow to fall in july,
it's always felt like an empty gaze
out the window,
after an illusion to the ears,
the tires against the pavement,
only for my iris to
release sapphire pools of
disappointment,
because eight years later,
and your love is still a question,
that i've never asked,
because i already know the answer,
*you're not coming home

i am an empty vessel of life,
that was once filled
with the brisk wind,
that echoed between the stems of
fragrant flowers; the inhabitants of my lungs.

& now i am the remains of
the fluids of old flames -
filled to the brim.

     • (1) my mother fills me to the peak of the mountain that i am,
      with fiery volcanic ash.
      she shakes me to the point of no return -
      paints my silhouette in monochromatic shades of despair,
      carves the edges of my bones with the idea that i am the ghoul that
      haunts the walls of this house.
      she injects me with fury, until i am the artist who painted me across
      the canvas that is this life.
      the man with anger etched eyes, and a frigid heart.

     • (2) my father fills my glass anatomy with potent gin
     i never feel like he sees me.
     he's focused on the romantic burn in his throat.
     tangled in his bitter laughter,
     i wonder if he can sense the anger buried beneath my melancholy
     eyes.
     always straining to see beyond the crooked frame of my
     cheekbones,
     he probably couldn't paint the sky with the hue of my eyes,
     he'd paint it in vivid cerulean,
     lost in the blur of my coffee stained irises.

    • (3) my sister fills my atmosphere with acid rain,
     because every time her presence enchants my focus,
     my eyes become thick clouds,
     because i can't fade into her,
     she pushes me away like the tide,
     & she's an ocean with scarlet waves
     arising from the gold mines carved in straight lines
     across her arms.
     she's an artist who can't create anything beyond
     sculpting her demise,
     painting her misery in violet eyes and decaying flesh.

& i am an empty body
with decaying curves and edges,
i can't consume these potions.

not if they won't make the flowers grow back

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.

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.

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 seem to think that mountains were put on this earth,
to stop my bones from reaching the peak,
because you'd know i'd never climb them,
you knew my soul was a universe and everything around it suffered the wrath of gravity,
that no matter what i'd always be pulled back down,
like the tears of the sky,
like an apple dangling from a tree branch engulfed in the autumn air,
eventually they're bound to fall.
the thing about the rain is that it has to sacrifice falling,
so light can seep through the sky's flesh,
and it does not accept it's defeat after it has trickled into the veins of this earth,
it rushes through it like blood vigorously pumping
in the hearts of passionate lovers making churches out of each other's bodies for the first time.
and the fruit of the earth becomes embedded in the grass,
and makes love with the sky's tears,
so someday the stars can look back and realize their sadness was worth it because the trees stand with the spines of soldiers,
and bear fruit that cause our tongues to make numbness an urban legend.
there is nothing weak about falling,
it is the test of life's resilience,
may the puddles in the sidewalks of this earth always remind you that even the sky cries too,
and may your tongue's ****** from the flesh of this earth's fruit always remind you of the beauty in falling,

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 remember that night, like I remember the first time your lips became acquainted with mine,
The moon was embracing the thin sheet of winter's rain - a sapphire shadow illuminated my mind.
The sky was sad, but the stars were smiling.
The night's opaque disposition was all I seemed to know.
Though, I recall your eyes-
Like the first snowfall that frigid November ever graced me with.
Your eyes -
They were painted in crimson, illuminated by your laughter.
And the stars were put to shame by the light within your iris,
Your skin was a brilliant saffron,
Like a marigold in summer's warm embrace.
I wanted to paint your cheeks with vibrant strokes of scarlet -
My gentle lips the most suitable paintbrush.
And that was the night I fell for your crimson disposition,
Your eyes were the sky's azure complexion set to flames -
Followed by the silver freckles scattered across midnight's opaque canvas.
I haven't wished on a star in months -
Not when there are galaxies in your eyes.


(m.c.)

I have always said I hate liars,
it's probably not a coincidence that I also hate myself,
they say lying is a sin,
to me,
it is a language I heard spoken so often in my home,
I have become fluent in it.
No, I am not afraid of going to hell,
I've been paying rent to live there with the quarters from the lying jar my parents started the first time I learned that my mouth is a weapon,
it's not much of a home,
but who am I to tell anyone what a home is,
the last ten years,
there is not one single place I have felt comfortable existing in,
that statement includes my own flesh,
So when I tell you that I've been living there,
I mean to tell you that my body has become a forest fire,
That the only difference between me and the Amazon rain forest,
is I did this to myself,
that humanity will not suffer in my absence,
I am down to my last acre,
I am coughing up the ashes of every person I have hurt by only using my tongue,
it is not a talent I take pride in,
it is a self-defense mechanism,
I want to believe that if a snake knew it's venom would **** you, it wouldn't bite,
that if a lion knew how your mother looked at you when you were  first born, it wouldn't feed on your flesh,
but animals act in ways that they have been taught to survive,
there's a difference between me and a lion,
I have seen the way my mother looks at her child,
the child who wasn't an addict,
so when my tongue becomes a weapon and tells her I'm sober again,
and my insides are swallowed by flames,
the only difference between my tongue and a gun,
is the intentions I have are not to cause harm,
if that was the case I would simply tell the truth,
tell me is lying a sin,
if the only reason I did it was so that no one else has to choke on the smoke of the fire I started?

sometimes i tell people the reason i see my childhood like i've just downed a whole bottle of *****;
like a volcano has just erupted in the back of my throat,
is because when i was a child,
someone set flames to my home.
that i lost my childhood to a fire,
and if you could go back in time,
you would have believed that single match could have
swallowed the whole house.
whiskey lingered in every room,
the walls were drunk,
every day felt like my family was playing a game of jenga,
we were all waiting for someone's palms to fumble,
to make the whole house collapse.
and it was so easy because the walls were as stable as an intoxicated man walking on a tight rope.
but this whole story is a lie,
and the true story is that i swallowed the fire,
and i still have the photos scattered in my closet,
that taste like gasoline going down my throat.

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 will never look you in the eyes,
because when our eyes lock,
i will flinch,
like a nervous tick,
my eyes will bounce back to the ground faster than a loose bullet.
i've participated in a war like this before,
i just came home from the last one,
nervous tremors vibrate against my insides still,
i can't do this again.
i will always be the first person to pull away,
my embrace will always feel like two negatively charged magnets pressed against each other,
you will always feel like part of me is pulling away,
no matter how firmly my body is against yours
because i am,
because to be close is also to place my heart within your reach,
to place my neck in between your palms,
the bruises had just faded from the surface of my skin.
i will not do this again.
but he places his hands on me and for the first time,
i don't want to pull away,
for the first time,
i yearn for my body to collapse into his,
like two pages of a closed book,
like the sun into the horizon line.
and when he looks at me,
i hesitate to look away.
to look at him is to see sanctuary in a war zone,
i still look away,
because for all i know this is just another mirage,
another illusion of a sea
by a soul dehydrated of love,
i don't yearn to go home after this war,
i am home.
i've done it again.

i've been trying to find the words,
in liquor bottles;
but the answer has never been at the bottom,
i fall asleep with my mind tangled in my hands,
and i awake day after day,
the sun is becoming more and more of a stranger to my flesh,
i'm running out of space for all these empty bottles,
i've considered filling them with my tears,
and giving them to you as a gift,
so you could baptize yourself in my sadness,
or get drunk on my misery's condensation,
because at this point,
i think there is more alcohol in my body than water,
my tears will taste like tequila and fermented heartbreak against your tongue,
but that burn will never hold a candle to the burn i have been feeling electrifying throughout me for weeks.

i've been trying to find the words
in white lines,
but what good is being high when all it does these days is remind you how low hell really is.
everything is starting to look like an emergency exit,
i see death in everything around me,
they say depression can be a superpower if you let it,
i don't consider transforming everything around me into a mechanism for self destruction,
to be a superpower.
i have never been afraid of heights,
i have always embraced being as far away from hell as possible,
but now i feel like i have swallowed it,
no matter how high i am,
everything around me is still burning,
and my veins are gasoline pipelines,
I feel like I am inches from my body becoming an island swallowed by a volcano,
that ant who fell victim to children experimenting with matches,
was that where you first discovered how to make something feel small?
how to make someone feel small.

i've been trying to find the words,
but i don't have them.
it is shameful what you have made out of love,
you have hypnotized me to believe that love has a numbing effect,
that it is crying yourself to sleep,
that it is uncertainty.
I have come to associate being in love with being in pain,
because when you tell me you love me,
i feel like my body is a house of cards,
and your voice - a hurricane.
what you have done to me is not beautiful,
no sentence that i will ever release from my lips will ever be as strong as the earthquake i feel when you touch me,
i can't navigate between the sky and the ground with your eyes clenched to my skin ,
my heartbeat becomes as flat as the horizon line.
there is nothing beautiful about how you have ridden my days of sunlight,
and my nights of stars, ,
i've been living in darkness for months,
probably because everyday since that night i feel like I'm paying rent to live in a stranger's shadow with my self-respect.

i don't have the words;
you have numbed the best parts of me,
made me believe that feeling is a privilege.
what a shame,
that when you tell me you love me i am haunted by the fear that you actually do.

There are parts of me I have yet to become acquaintances with,
Flesh,
I have never stroked with my fingertips
Like the sinner does when he's lonely and makes the Holy Bible his lover.
A bible that only sees the light when his world is crimson, going down in flames.
I can feel the presence of opaque shadows lingering in my head,
The fog is still too thick to see the edges of his face,
But the smell of whiskey still brings me to my knees
Like the sinner who sees scarlet flames every time he looks at his palms.
He reserves his Sundays for prayer.
My reality is seven-thousand ghosts chanting the same sermon against the walls of my anatomy, begging God for truth.
Pressing against every curve, sending shivers up my spine because it strikes a harp I've heard before.
White wallpaper, silent whispers, a ripe peach.
The clock on the wall strikes one-twenty-seven, the moon cries for help.
The sinner has just come home.
Whiskey entangled sentences, blurry vision, loose hands.
In the shadows, his palms reach for change in the fountain of youth.
After all these years, I'm still picking up the dimes he dropped on the sidewalks of my life.
I see orange in stranger's irises,
My surroundings become dark, humid spring days whenever I smell whiskey.

I wonder if he used it to set flames to my anatomy.
I don't know how to extinguish all of this smoke, but I can't see straight, I'm choking on all of the memories faded into the monochromatic sky.
I wonder if there's a prayer in the bible that paints my face across the canvas of his mind.
I'm still picking up the glass fragments of this shattered life.
Cutting my hands while putting the mirror back together.
Trying to see into myself, into the sad caramel eyes staring back at me.
Thick smoke, crimson flames, shadows dancing.
Ghosts screaming, blurry vision, dimes scattered across the floor.
I fear for the day all these faded sins become friends of mine.

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 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.