even when I was little I had a hard time leaving wounds alone —

the absent-minded uprooting of scabs and the slow flame of revived pain.

to bleed in so many small ways, to be so oblivious to being real.

if only they were tiny sacrifices, tiny offerings to whoever dealt out hurt and sadness, if only they were enough to keep my nose above water.

I find myself lost within four walls in more ways than one.

they say you should smoke sage in all your corners,

smudge its grey into the darkness. they say it puts the past to rest.

I burn leaves and I burn grass and I burn letters and thoughts and touches and it makes me blacker, blacker, blacker.

the remains of grief wait, latched shut in its music box. I can’t bear its singing. I can’t tear this flesh off my bones. I can’t make myself fiction.

but you did. you did and now I fade into a ballad not even worth its weight in the heartbreak it rhymes.

to have sought poetry only to plummet into misery. to have the currency of my decomposing tongue and no concoction of words to soothe the damage.

the rot runs deep. the rot is real. the rot is all I feel.

you’re all the lives kept out of my reach