i can't recall ever feeling so afraid
deaf from silence that won't keep quiet
living in a bed of cold sheets from open windows and spilt coffee
caged in days old clothes
and skin that won't stop sweating.

i am tired.

i am so tired.

i can't recall ever feeling so dead
and i don't know if it’s my shallow breath afraid to stir,
or my tired bones filled with weight, held down by your continual expected self,

but i used to think
in the middle of empty streets
where cars only crept by every hour or so
that my life is just shadows of already told stories, fixed into cracked brick walls
and they don't move, they just stand still

so i stand still too

wondering how far my feet could take me if i let them.


but god, when does it stop hurting?
because my heart doesn't beat as it used to
it just pounds against a crystallized chest
like how your fists used to pound against your own skin
trying to shake yourself out of days old dreams that kept destroying you.

i should have spoken to you
but i was scared what I said might’ve shattered the both of us
but you really should have known that i thought you were wonderful

and important

and maybe i loved you

and maybe i still do

and maybe that's something worth being ruined over.

it was nice knowing you’d break your bones for me
but i’d already broken my own so you wouldn’t have to.

i wish i knew how to stop feeling so afraid
but losing you wasn’t like losing myself
because my skin still knows how to stretch itself around my spine-stuffed back
and it knows the grooves hidden behind each rib, each piercing wrist bone;
and it hasn’t reached its point of defeatedness
like how you reached yours with a knife.

“tell my mother i love her,”
2:34 a.m
the last words you ever spun into my ear,

I wish they sounded like music or something lyrically moving,
but they sounded like thunder, and storms that wouldn't let up.

2:34 a.m
the burning echoed sound of a dial tone branded in places i could never reach -
why didn't you say you loved me back?