several stories above a concrete street
is where i feel the most alive
the emptiness of a bottle makes me complete
and i am just five
five, when i start to feel this sickness
overtaking my mind

"i hate when people say they aren't giving their best effort. today, your best effort was coming here, or letting someone bring you here. your best effort was letting someone help you. that's the best you could do. it's the best you can do for you."

it started out like ashes floating down from the sky,
landing on my tongue with the color of snow and the taste of acid.
i can feel the flakes in my throat,
can feel it burning,
can feel it creeping down my windpipe and into my stomach and my heart and my head.
it starts out as ashes and then it is a spark landing on my skin,
a spark reflecting off of so many drops of crimson hitting the floor.
and before i can quite catch my breath it is a wildfire
it is burning me
it is melting the skin off my bones
with endless thoughts of ledges and bottles of pills and taking a ******* gun to my head
and
i
am
still.
everything inside me, the inferno burning me up is still.
i have tried to fill the hole it left with so many shots,
so many pills,
so many drags of smoke and so many cuts to my skin.
i am nothing but an empty void to throw myself into,
a walking black hole,
a corpse above the ground.

i am standing in front of a mirror painting my face so as to cover up the hollowness inside
like my long sleeves cover up trails of sadness covering my wrists

she wears her hospital bracelets like jewelry
to cover the scars that adorn her like
red-inked tattoos.
she pops pills like soda tabs
ignoring the dangers of overdosing
on caffeine highs and the sickly
sweetness of sugar.
she cannot recall the last time she didn't
wash her
antidepressants
anxiety meds
sleeping pills
mood stabilizers
down with alcohol in the hopes
someone would notice the heavy imbalance
wasn't just in her head.
she hasn't believed in god since
she crept downstairs on her ninth birthday
to stare at her reflection in the kitchen knives
and didn't see Him staring back at her.
there was nobody telling her to go
back to bed.
she hasn't gotten on her knees for
anything holy since she started
inflicting pain upon herself;
leaving traces of sadness on
her ribcage
her wrists
her thighs
her stomach
her hips.
she has been living in a grave
and her thoughts never stop playing hide and seek
she only ever searches
at the bottom of a lake
or if they're mixed in with the stones in her pockets
or hiding under the train tracks near her house.

as we grow older
our hearts grow ever colder
the thermometers of our souls
dipping ever lower
and soon the shards of broken
glass
and
hearts
are the only things that phase us
so we start slitting our wrists
in an attempt to bleed out sadness
within us

clinks of razor blades
against each other sounds
far more like church bells
tolling
than i would like it to
and it has been this way
since i can remember