I catch whifs of you in between
the lines of my DNA, tangled
in everything I keep in the dark, tangled
in the knots in my stomach,
in all the white lies I tell.
I slide my fingers against the edges of
sharp things, give myself lovely
collections of papercuts and splinters
for the fun of it, see if I bleed the same
as before the alcohol weighed
down my arteries and sunk
into my brain;
I am resting my arms at my sides now because they're too heavy
to hold up, carrying all this lead around in
my blood, my blood tells me go keep going, keep sinking all the way
all the way down till I can't feel it
anymore, keep colors plastered
on my walls today because the gray keeps seeping and seeping and seeping,
crawling back in around my fractured walls, back in around
everything I try to preserve, clinging to everything
soft and poisoned and poisoned and
black
I always knew this house was
filled with too many secrets to hold, but I never thought my time
would be tallied up here the same way as everything else
falling victim to the same plague that carries
one old disease into the next,
I think I'm treading on
dangerous ground here, skin crawling
in cheap substitutions for the chemicals my brain
leaves convenient vacancies for,
take me out of my skin once
in a while,
breathe me into your sandpaper-scraped palms and rough me up
like the rest of you, rough me up till
my tongue bleeds
and my serotonin runs dry,
I tell myself the quiet is a good place to be but honestly I ******* die without
constant reminders that I'm okay
I'm slowly cutting paper chains out of the leftover tissue clinging
to my bones, maybe once I hang them up in here things won't look so sparse
maybe we'll learn to breathe
maybe your bones are too weak or mine are
laced with the concrete of all these decisions, because the numbness dilutes
the aching,
catch me outside doing
cartwheels,
catch me outside in my bare feet, leaving
trails for you to pick up on because maybe at the end of them I let it all go
maybe my body wasn't built for breathing in this dust,
my lungs aren't
vacuum cleaners & my fingernails don't scrape away paint like
they used to
Jun 27, 2018
Jun 27, 2018 at 11:17 PM UTC
I catch whifs of you in between
the lines of my DNA, tangled
in everything I keep in the dark, tangled
in the knots in my stomach,
in all the white lies I tell.
I slide my fingers against the edges of
sharp things, give myself lovely
collections of papercuts and splinters
for the fun of it, see if I bleed the same
as before the alcohol weighed
down my arteries and sunk
into my brain;
I am resting my arms at my sides now because they're too heavy
to hold up, carrying all this lead around in
my blood, my blood tells me go keep going, keep sinking all the way
all the way down till I can't feel it
anymore, keep colors plastered
on my walls today because the gray keeps seeping and seeping and seeping,
crawling back in around my fractured walls, back in around
everything I try to preserve, clinging to everything
soft and poisoned and poisoned and
black
I always knew this house was
filled with too many secrets to hold, but I never thought my time
would be tallied up here the same way as everything else
falling victim to the same plague that carries
one old disease into the next,
I think I'm treading on
dangerous ground here, skin crawling
in cheap substitutions for the chemicals my brain
leaves convenient vacancies for,
take me out of my skin once
in a while,
breathe me into your sandpaper-scraped palms and rough me up
like the rest of you, rough me up till
my tongue bleeds
and my serotonin runs dry,
I tell myself the quiet is a good place to be but honestly I ******* die without
constant reminders that I'm okay
I'm slowly cutting paper chains out of the leftover tissue clinging
to my bones, maybe once I hang them up in here things won't look so sparse
maybe we'll learn to breathe
maybe your bones are too weak or mine are
laced with the concrete of all these decisions, because the numbness dilutes
the aching,
catch me outside doing
cartwheels,
catch me outside in my bare feet, leaving
trails for you to pick up on because maybe at the end of them I let it all go
maybe my body wasn't built for breathing in this dust,
my lungs aren't
vacuum cleaners & my fingernails don't scrape away paint like
they used to