Your chalky eyes
read my chapped lips
as words tumble from my tongue
like a sickness

Your wryly fingers
Trace shapes against your knee
Like a spider stitching it’s web
And my voice cracks

Your closed lips
sit motionlessly on your face
like art in a gallery
and I am a sellout

Your destructive neglect
Weighs my tireless breath
And I am screaming now,
“I need your help,”

Your eyes glaze over
As your fingers drum
And your lips purse
And I am nowhere to be found

Blue little veins
dance along wrists
and crowd hands like traffic on busy streets,
and I think about your voice
when you’ve just pooled into sleep
and I realize it’s a bit like
the flowing of blood that never stops.
“have I ever told you,” you’d whisper
before dipping your head into sleep like black paint
and I never did get to hear
what never did leave your lips
but still aches within me
like sizzling coal.
the streets are thread
I am trying to sew back together
with stop sings and green lights turning my fingers numb
because I can still feel the poison of your voice in my
blue little veins

I said, “Let’s get out of here”
because I was so tired
I thought I’d disappear
and I knew how much you loved
long car rides in the nighttime

You told me the windows
reminded you of life
with the way the world raced on by
in a foggy daze
and I thought it was strange
you failed to mention
the beauty of the sleepy orange streetlights
on the deserted speedy highways

You told you never loved anything
as much as the radio at 2am
because you knew
there were others like you listening
and you would watch
the road with such an intensity
that I found myself jealous
of those rundown empty streets
and I wondered if I was your blindspot

You told me 24-hour gas stations
were places of magic
because so many people walked in and out
and never looked back
and when I was pouring myself coffee
I heard the cashier tell you
how lucky you were to have a girl like me
and your silence was as lukewarm
to my chest as the drink was to my lips

You told me the other drivers
on the road with you were lost
because they all knew
where they were headed
and had heads full of clarity
but as I stared at my blue veins
on my pale wrist
I realized that I was the lost one
and the miles ahead and behind
us both were nothing compared
to where I’d rather be

You told me the destination
was not what mattered,
it was only how you got there,
and I thought about this
in the messy passenger seat of your car
as you said, “We can never leave

They tell me to let it go
but how can I do that
when it
has latched onto me
and made a home
in my silence

It has started
paying rent
and the fee
is rotting me
from the outside
in

It has started
to scar
and I wish to feel
at least
a little less
like the dog-eared page
of the book
you never finished

It has started
or should I say
continued
to leave me
empty of explanations
and full of hurt
and still
they tell me to let it go

You ask me, “What is the point of all of this?”

And I lean in close, stare into your messy eyes, and tell you, “Darling, there has never been a point and there never will be. You can spend your precious time searching, and mapping out the rules and trades, and protesting the rights you will never obtain, and devoting your actions to their counteractions, but at the end of the day nothing will have changed. You see, I believe everything is better in dimmer light. Lower the shades, flick the switch, fall asleep to the humming of your computer in your pitch-black bedroom. Live in the shadows of the people; watch from the outside; since when has darkness become something to be feared? Breathe in the negative space; exhale the wind you’ve been storing in your chest since the day you set foot on these rocky grounds. Stop believing in the ‘point’ and start believing in the ‘less’. Regardless of where in the world you go, the distance you choose to stretch, there will always be the same things in different ***** environments. And by this, I mean, there will always be a blushing teenage girl in the whims of her own disasters. There will always be the lost people, the found people, the people right there in the in-between bits of the cracks your feet always seem to step on. There will always be the luck lost on the boy without a father, on the artist with crippling hands, on the old woman dying half awake. You will find this time after time, winter after winter. You can try your best to plaster on that dazzling smile, but who said that they needed to see it to love you? You can try to stop those precious hands of yours from shaking, but who said a little thunder isn’t exactly what they need? You can try to find a point to these lives we lead, love, but who said there was one to be found?”

I can only warn you this once:
do not let it slip back in

if you do
it will sink you like a ship;
it will map out your crevices
and tiny little holes
that polka-dot the bridge
of your collarbones
and take hold
and pump sadness into
your shell of a body

if you do
it will bury you like a casket;
it will cloak you
in all of its charcoal warmth
that burns your insides
and shields you from things
you should welcome into
your shell of a body

if you do
it will cage you in like an animal;
it will build its wall
of heavy slates of hate
that blind your pretty
glimmering eyes
and hide
your shell of a body

if you do
it will hit you like a bullet;
it will slam you onto
its filthy gravel
of ugly words that tell you
things you should
never believe about
your shell of a body

I can only warn you once:
Do not let it slip back in

I am a swipe of coarse paint
smudged and softened
by curious fingertips
that shade and shape me
and hang me helplessly
on a wall

I am the color of the sky
when  flurries of snow
sprinkle the streets
with no regards
to the shoulder-racking shivers
they bring along

I am a dusty book
in the corner of the library
with a broken spine
and I lay torn and tattered
from too much use
or perhaps too little

I am the empty shell
of a person
who has been drained
of their butterflies
and want nothing more
than to feel something
rather than an abundance
of nothing
and nothing at all