“Breathe, Exhale, Breathe”

I had the words to this poem
In my mind at some point
Before I breathed them all out
One at a time
Uncontrollably

I’m trying to turn on light bulbs
By setting the filament ablaze
And drying my hair with a blowtorch
Doesn’t seem like such a bad idea

If red is the color of fire
And blue is the color of water
It’s really no surprise that
My favorite color is purple

Inside my mind there is a lake
Clear, calm, undisturbed
Reflecting the unmoving clouds
In the overcast sky

I walk around with my head down
Hiding under an umbrella
Pockmarked by the bullets
That it didn’t block
It never lets the sunshine in
Only the rain

If people are so scared of the cold
The heat, the rain, the hail
The storms and the snow
The wind and the night
Why am I terrified of the walls
And the ceiling in my room?

If I were drowning in the ocean
Instead of screaming for help
Or swimming to the nearest shore
I’d probably try to run away from the problem


I’d never want to be a cartographer
I drew a map of my mind once
It’s a little circle in the middle
The rest scribbled out by permanent marker
For the places I haven’t explored

There’s ash on my hands
From trying to dig out the memories
That weren’t set ablaze
By the thoughts in my mind

I don’t know where I went
It’s somewhere mixed in
With the rough carbon copies
That I keep for reference
In the depths of my subconscious

My mind’s eye has gone colorblind
All my thoughts are black and white
The grey reprieves the monotony
Until I start to think about it too much
And rip up the canvas

On days like today it feels like
I fell asleep behind the steering wheel
Years and years ago
And slipped off into an unpleasant dream
Where I’m still alive