I suffocated myself with the words I didn't say.

I don't know what's wrong with me,
What does God want from me?
So I can be perfect and funny once
Again, youth restored, safe so my
Heart isn't bored

Drenched in despair,
I've already been replaced -
I watched it happen, day by day,
And I can't help but hate
That which is better than I am

I need an escape and a place
I can run to because this town
Isn't my home anymore;
These aren't my friends anymore

Pro-blade whispers on the edge of things,
There's no running from this

Forcing myself to sip water is different
Than drinking sunlight and taking in
Attention gets me high but it never lasts

By the time I'm home the world has fallen
And I'm putting the pieces together to
Figure out why it broke and if I
Caused this myself

Keep this boy alone

Can't find a reason to stick around since
It's easier to dust off bad looks and
Double-meaning words than
Rely on a dead man's grip

It was the same yesterday
And today and tomorrow
And I'm praying for a change
But abandonment is the solution
I don't want to accept

By the end of the day and the sun is
High I find myself forgotten by
Those whom I love and I begin to
Feel that heat in my chest

I run home like a child pushed to breaking,
Hands tense and clutching denim,
Breaths forced because breathing is hard

Praying for change, denying what I
Know is true, I need to
Escape these echoes

I'm an inconvenience
And time is short no matter the hour

I'll start with the first line of
A song I'm listening to and
It all rolls out from there

Knowing you act like you love
But I know you don't -
It's the purest form of torture

Pretend I don't care
Masking this face with another
Lips touching on nothing

Listen: it's been no different for me --
We've both found a future and a truth

And I remember the flashing lights at that
Concert devoid of pyrotechnics or
Rube Goldberg machines but it was
Perfect anyway

Do you see it?

GONE WITH THE SUN ON MY BACK AND THE MOONLIGHT IN MY HAIR, I proclaimed, and I left with a trace in the form of six footsteps perfectly aligned in the soil post-storm.

I PROMISE THAT ONE DAY YOU WILL FIND ME, I bade them farewell, my message scratched in stone with a knife that if it were any sharper then I swear to God time would've bent to it and not the other way around.

I LEFT YOUR MONEY IN THE FREEZER WITH THE WINE YOUR MOTHER STOLE AT HER FINAL MASS, I called back, the words rolling off my tongue like an afterthought, and this fleeting carelessness is all I wanted in life and I was ecstatic to finally achieve it.

"And if it takes forever,
Forever it'll be,"
I promised

And lying in the grass with
A perfect blue sky above me
I knew it had all gone to dust

And your perfect face haunted me for
Years because I began to wonder,
How could I have been so blind?