Loving someone who abuses substances is a love that lacks romance, but still maintains.
The moments of their sobriety are the ones in which we’re killing ourselves this time,
because we’re holding our breath.
Because before we have the chance to open our mouth again, we see you
going through your withdrawal,
the anger, the hate,
the hurt with no real blame but always consequences.
Nothing changes.
Loving someone who abuses substances makes you question
What else they abuse without realizing it. Or, at least, without admitting to it.
Television shows and magazines portray children and teens ‘finding their way’ through life,
when in reality they’re just another ******* crutch or pillar conveniently rooted
to a source that’s destroying itself, regardless.
It destroys us.
You throw the word down and out
Love
Wrap it around your bicep, constrict
Feel the resistance and call it
Love
Feel the blood stop and call it
Passion
feel the skin burn and call it
forgiveness.
Withdrawals are apologies
For being sober.
There is no room for who you are, when you love someone that abuses substances.
There is only room for the excuses they save for their moments of ‘clarity’ still
under a bell jar still
Wrapping plastic around lose particles they think will stabilize them
Or pouring a glass just to finish the bottle
Instead of themselves
All along never realizing
each pull tightens our ropes.

I started writing in second grade and couldn’t spell, but
I tried to be honest about how I felt that
the world seemed just a little too unfair to
consider God
really had the best penmanship.

Because etched concrete contains my family picture, now.
And a day won’t pass where you don’t hear how
somewhere else someone else is just like you but
also just a little worse off.

I felt it first in the floorboards
as voices gave a steam-engines warning.

The wrinkles on this page weren’t necessarily acquired over time
But through frustration from lies and
that day someone said to you things were just fine
when
I felt the splinters forming in my spine, digging-

I was holding
on to rotten
ply-wood, cracking
Fingers
Nails
Digging-
Breaking.

The vacant house now has a yard full of dandelions
but I hold my breath

as I force a poem
from rigor mortised fingers:

What doesn’t **** you
Will only leave you

I don't know where to start.

Where we started?
Abandoned...together..?
Not even together! Abandoned..
and cowardly,
we met.
No, we meshed.
We conglomerated
our debris
into a living entity
of
each other?
or nothing---

In the dark I misread
in your not reading glasses
the depth you inhabit,
No, you stole
no, you scraped
no
im wrong.

one time
you told me
there's something in you
that will push
and ****
until someone cries
until a part of them
crumbles beneath you

i remember this
spoken
the thing's you have said
to me
i can't remember
your lips but

ive had boys
who've dismissed my
nos
my
ouches
my
me

boys who held me

after

That's cute, I guess.
You're..nicer, when
I hate myself.

it’s really hard to breathe.

I can’t eat anything, I’m starving and nauseous.

and I wish maturity was a thing

but instead,
i’m stuck defending myself

against cell phone applications
that find you affection
from someone just as infected

and you already have that low of an opinion
to believe

these are the kinds of people I want to share my death bed with

I wanted to remain friends
but I don’t think that saying
*******
is effective
when
I already have

and when I did

you held me above you

and told me you loved me, I didn’t realize

you were trying  to pull yourself up too

your own reflection masked
with my skin

this false perception
you knew

you lacked within

I want to drown myself.
And sometimes, I actually do.

I take all of the people around me, the ones I do and do not know,

and let them suffocate me.

Fill my lungs
with their scent
until there is no more
room for air.

My ears are submerged in meaningless
promises, hope
and laughter. I lose myself,

in the false identities
of those who move
and breathe
and live near me.

Who have lives and
dreams and

secrets.
I take all of those things

in,

I bury them beneath

my skin

               and I sink
               with them.

I sink with all of them. But I hold my head above water so well.