I've screamed a thousand words,
Into blank pages, with black ink,
And I fall in love with things,
Too twisted, too inhuman,
Too dark, too nightmarish.

I try to crush paper in my fists,
But it pierces through my sieved skin.
I touch the unsaid words,
Resting on my chapped lips and wonder,
What color the sun might be.

And I try to learn,
To hold my breath,
Because someday,
They might take,
My oxygen away.

And I press my words,
Onto empty white walls,
And swallow the stones,
Rising in my voiceless throat,
And stare at you for what could be eternity,

And I blend colors on palette
with broken fingers and wonder
if I'm a ghost born out of empty canvas.
I try to copy the serenity in twilight colors
but I only see thunderstorm gray.

And I try to separate skylines,
From skyscrapers,
But my cardboard hands,
Are too clumsy,
And they tremble too much,

So instead,
I fill your vacant inside,
With unlit embers,
And rewind the time,
Until we're alive again.

I leave traces,
of my painted hands,
on your face from all the times,
I used to struggle,
to paint a perfect apple.

And you're still frozen,
In a photograph beside my unmade bed,
With your mouth still open,
To say a word I never heard,
And an arm dangling from a ladder rung,

And you're watching me,
But I've grown too old,
And you're still seven years old,
Imprinted and stilled forever,
Into a seventeen year old photograph.