My lips hold back the lava in my chest. The burning, consuming, encroaching destruction is hardening my resolve more than you could have guessed. I feel so at home in the flames that water is so underwhelming. It’s the coals I sleep on through everything. To look so long at the light only to blind myself each time; You’d think I’d learn my lesson after each rhyme. I’ve never felt comfort for long enough to recall. The videos of me laughing are something that now make me bawl. I don’t know how that feels anymore. I don’t remember what you sound like or the color of your front door. Your voice no longer echoes in my head. Your face no longer plagues me in bed. I don’t know you outside of memories; Moments of my time that bite like fleas. You make me itch still, A symptom that which the spot can never refill. I’ve been battling between anger and grief for so long now. It’s a why; it’s a how. It’s a feeling I can’t live without. No matter how hard I try to erase the pressure or smother the intensity, the kindling always relights in this drought. With a deep breath in, releasing all the smoke back out. It’s my meditation now. It’s my medication now. To smell it on someone else and be engrossed in the poison that this can allow; My dear, that’s intoxicating for me lately. A mass we are swallowing with the passing moment cornering us innately. I don’t partake with my own vessel but I will consume a host so absorbed. They don’t see me molding my character every time I get bored. One day I will have the entire puzzle lined up together. Each piece fitted so perfectly, completely combined in a tether. They will compose a tale so broken and numb. That’s the feeling that fills my ****** drum. Every tear is a bad dream. Every eyelash is a wish for this story to have a different theme.