A broken promise, a kind of mutiny.

I traced the grout between the tile,
thinking,

Only a God could make people out of dust
and expect them to recover.

Love,
trust,
the color of the sky
after you give it a name,

simple because it's not,

just words
you live outside of,

somewhere a sentence can't reach.

Castle girl, rapunzel rapunzel,
let me down gently,
the crocodiles in the moat,
each word,

a yellowing tooth.

Will you pry open the door?
Crowbar to the problem and
the sweat beading at your temples?

Escape means nothing.

3 days, 3 nights, the world
swallowed me up and spit me out,
thinking I'd learned my lesson,

slitting my wrists on the road to nineveh.

I pray to god all night.
I shout at god all night.
I cry to god all night.
Why does this dark eat at me,
the days like lead in my chest?
I pray to god,

prey to god,

the silence that carried me into november

and the thought planted in the back of my mind:
*maybe I deserve this.

baby,

do you play-girl like you
*******?

I wonder sometimes.

A life without fear is a life without friction.

You're older now, soldier.
Your wars aren't the same.

Dust and the blinds they collect,
days that feel red, almost enviable
in their passion.

Shaky hands again, dry mouth
again, sirens singing low in
the black water day after day.

Death should mean something.
Encore for the epitaph!

It isn't real, but it is. It's replaying
in your head. It isn't real, but

it happened.

the only difference between a safe house and
a prison is intent,

so don't lie to me.

i've bent bobby pins enough to pick it
apart,

the too close for comfort, the itch on your back,

how we tally it up, rally the rebel yells and the
outliers like broken lighthouses.

train tracks out of me, tack the endless question,
tackle me to the ground and start over.

I have enough scars, so forget it.

the food is on fire, but at least it's cooked.

cool metal handle, lukewarm water and smoke,
candle-like in the candlelight.

what was raw before is now ash. you've
made a difference, but

was it an improvement?

sanity for the privileged,
survival for the ******,

these dregs of innocence
left in crumbling hands,

the waking, the re-waking,
the reckoning sure to come,

the conviction shaking,
bruised fruit whispering

in the shadow of an eclipsed
sun. Bite me here and here

and here, and hear them like
the wind sweeps through

a deserted road, silence all
but new.