It's hard to feel alive when things
are constantly dying inside you.

Some nights, I comb through all my well-kept chaos
as if a secret lover visiting a grave.
These nights, I forget to breathe.

I am sick of asking the cobwebs
how the smallest gap in my ribs
can make room for this much pain.
It has grown into a woodland —
and I, the lost, the helpless prey;
the odd girl out.

Look for my bones among wild lilacs,
covered in forest soil, darling,
and you'll know that some deaths you don't mourn
and some deaths you can't.

Some nights,
I comb through all this well-kept chaos
in search for a sign of life,
but my flesh has been a map
of cigarette burns
and vague memories of dying;
strangers have been sick of laying kisses
on things that taste like
they've been bleeding —
on things that taste like death.
Maybe one day, I, too, will be sick enough
to stop prodding wounds open
to leave poems in the doorstep
of the things
rotting inside me.

Then again, some sorrows
you don't turn into poetry.
Some sorrows you just feel.

Some nights, I comb through
all this well-kept chaos.
Other nights, I bury it
beneath my floorboard,
hoping that there will be no haunting —
no pounding;
just peace.

But then, some chaos you learn to live with;
some, you don't survive.

Some deaths you can't mourn.

Some deaths you just die.