Yes, yes, I can hear what you're saying. You keep talking, even when I burrow under my covers like an animal. Even when I close into myself like a bloodroot plant.

I'm sick of ******* smiling when all I want to do is rip up this carpet and dig a hole through the wood and the brick and the dirt and climb in and hide.

Would you let me be, let me rest where my deepest degrading voices are hushed? Your words would finally be gone and I'd be buried with dirt in my lungs, but it would feel better than being back there.

Five minutes would come and you'd snap from the loneliness and its awful cry. You'd shovel until your knuckles bled. You'd pull me out of my ***** nirvana and sit me up, and your eyes would look soft but I know your lips would not be. You'd do all this just to wake me up and shake me and tell me it was All My Fault. You'd hold my mouth open while you spat down my throat. You'd scream new songs for me to sing.

The skin near my eyes would burn from the salt and I would swallow your sounds. There'd be a kiss or we'd ****, or maybe you'd play with my hair while saying you loved me. But the whole time I'd be wishing my soul had stayed in the ground, covered in dirt, defeated and in the dark.