i walk around like everyone around me has a death wish,
my teeth clenched,
my smile on defence mode,
i ain't no vulnerable *****,
but that's a lie I have spent years trying to convince myself,
because if I don't give anyone the chance to set off dynamite in my ribcage,
they never will.
my heart has enough cracks in it,
I can feel the cold air circulating inside of every slit,
but like every person I have ever come to know,
it's just passing through.
nothing is permanent,
but these scars have been here for so long,
and I'm starting to feel like being mentally ill really is a death sentence,
depression is a criminal who takes everything you have left,
it kills you,
but there will be no trial.
it leaves you alone, cold in the streets,
holding on to nothing but your self respect,
which is as faint as my life line feels,
we are all dying,
I am dying,
but the problem is I already feel dead.
I have spent my whole life preparing for this loneliness.

mum taught me that people come and go,
i've seen her on her knees enough times,
becoming a puppet to a ventriloquist self esteem
pulling on every string
except the ones that could make those men come back.
she taught me to live life like you've got winter electrifying throughout your body,
be cold, be dull.
don't you ever fall in love,
those brown eyes and thick lips ain't ****,
every sentence brave enough to push through those teeth,
they don't mean anything to anyone,
the artist who painted my bones on this earth,
grinded my bones into gun powder,
which I use to shoot myself in the chest
every time someone tells me I'm beautiful.
now my sentences are shy,
they're fragile,
they are innocent felons locked behind the bars that are my teeth,
screaming inside the penitentiary of my mouth,
but still I swallow them.
still I will never look anyone in the eyes,
because I'm afraid they'll see every nightmare tucked behind my irises.
I don't give anyone the chance to fear me,
I've spent enough time fearing myself.

dad taught me about absence,
which is why I've learned to make the empty side of my bed feel full,
how I've learned to stop missing the pieces of myself I lost so long ago,
how to make homes out of every person i meet,
because he destroyed the only home I ever knew,
what's the point,
he could never make up his mind if i was worth it,
what's a home if you're never sure who's coming back to it,
but i know I am always coming back to every person I have made homes out of,
because i put every possession I own into them,
I heat their walls with all the warmth left in my heart,
I furnish their rooms with my pain that I have learned to transform into something which comforts others,
but they always leave without giving my possessions back,
and I'm still walking around this earth wondering why the **** I am so empty inside.
they always leave because my body is a graveyard to a dead child,
because underneath all this flesh is a dead body,
blood seeping through all seven layers of skin,
I wonder if people can smell the death when they look at me
my father killed three people in his lifetime,
and only two of them got justice,
i wasn't that lucky.

I have always tried so hard to not let this world turn my body into stone,
I was a river flowing through this earth,
fluid, careless.
I was a child,
ready to surrender my heart to any stranger,
now I keep that ***** locked up,
just like my tongue.
I have always been hypersensitive to feeling,
this world is not optimized for my heart,
so in a cell, it will stay.
I mean I've seen enough hospitals in my life,
and their solution to my pain is always to lock it up,
because i'm a danger to myself,
i'm a danger to other people,
like my emotions are sociopathic serial killers,
and I am unstable because I can't keep them locked up,
yet my whole life I have been taught to let them roam freely like a stream,
when they are tsunamis erupting inside of me,
killing me.

they are toxic to my insides,
we were all born dying,
and my head is only speeding up the process.
but my emotions are always just a symptom of being unstable,
and not human.
they do not come in waves,
they come in hurricanes,
they destroy everything I once had,
so I swallow them,
ignoring the destruction occurring inside of me,
and here I will be, suffering,
tasting the pain lingering on my tongue,
trying to spit it out,
but my teeth are thick metal bars,
my pain is still doing time,
hungry to scream out everything these bones have ever felt,
but my teeth stay clenched,
don't you say anything about that child,
don't you even pretend that it's there,
everyone will see the weakness in your eyes,
and they will run.

but I am in pain,
and still I pretend like I'm bigger than them,
walking around like I don't need anyone,
forever trying to clean up the blood pouring out of the scars this life has left on my body,
just so rhat no one flees in fear,
even though I'm drowning in it,
be happy you had the privilege to run,
I was never that lucky.