Festering scabs-
an angel's wing.

Rose thorn stabs-
****** lips sing.

Pearlescent skin-
putrid glow.

Dead within?
I don't know.

Wasted youth,
rotten brain,

hard truth-
down the drain.

Angel's face-
rusalka's heart;

a dark place
from the start.

Sometimes the rain is invigorating;
washing away a year’s worth of black dust,
proving that yes, we are capable of forgiving.

Sometimes it rains so hard
that the unopened flowers are pelted off the trees
before they have a chance to open or bear fruit,
starving out this year’s clutch of birds
as the bedraggled petals rest upon
the ever hopeful eggshells.

Cryptic terror angels follow me each day,
I wish I was better at scaring people away.

I lock onto you like an enzyme,
to catalyze your rage, and force you to bind.
Allowing your own vitriol to dissolve you,
reduce you to nothing but a stain.

A harmless puddle of organic matter,
once an angel,
now straining through my fingers,
harmlessly trickling down the drain.

It is where people like you belong.

Help me exist.

Help me feel like I exist.

I am unable to feel
anything but the diagonal trickles
of melancholy, or hate.
They prevent me from fading away,
but I still detest them,
because they make me Other.
I fear that I am unable to love.
I know why.
Love is easy to write about.
But to write about feelings that don’t exist is much harder.
What does not exist cannot be created,
for a clever mind to transcribe into words.
Plucking them out of the ether of lexicon
requires a solid word, and a solid hand,
And I have neither.
I am made of halcyon and moonlight,
numbers stretched over a screen,
not quarks that are able to form bonds,
to feel connected.
Half the time I wish
that my corrupted radiance will spread.
Soft glitches, in the corners of their eyes
to eat away at their core until they stop
writing odes to love, that alien emotion,
the words snatched out of their hands mid sentence
by an ethereal hand now real enough
to gather the thoughts as they dissipate away
into a fragrant bouquet for one last breath

until they are lost forever.

Just when I felt that I could get to know you
you slipped through my fingers
as the dread rose again to press my lips shut.

The words did not flow naturally
but were strained
repetitive

lifeless.

In a single pause, we both learned
that I am far too alien for this world,
far too detached from reality

far too afraid of knowing, or being known.
With a hesitant smile, I turn away,
knowing that it will be the last.

My skin bruises where you touch,
threatening to burst like a delicate peach
to coat your fingers in warm viscera.

My uncanny senses easily find you in a crowd
so that I can avoid you
and spare us the awkwardness.

I never knew what was wrong,
what fundamental spark I am missing,
that allows me to neatly clip through others

without being noticed.
I never was able to decide
whether the strange matter that makes up my body

Is a blessing for allowing me to hide
or a curse for not allowing me to connect,
to be swinging on that uniquely human wavelength.

There is something living inside all of us.
Horrible filigree fear and existential dread.
Seeping through the membrane,
gnawing at the bones.

If this existence is all there is
am I just a vessel for something greater?
I want to believe that I am free,
but I can still feel it.

There are tender hands reaching inside
caressing my heart with deliberate touch
and withdrawing sharply
to lick off the blood.

If this existence is all there is
then what is the point of resisting?
Resistance means to fall gracefully,
severed from the source,

to die, to decay, to be consumed,
and then forgotten.
My meaningless data will be overwritten
by someone who doesn’t question

the loving violation of hearts
and the delicate scabs that form
sealing the ports, keeping the terror
from rising once again.