you swallowed prunes as if your life depended on it, and to your mental state, they were better than any gateway drug or needle implanted into your muscles the rough exterior cracked and ripped apart your lips unforgivably; tearing down your esophagus with the force of a peach pit you rubbed dried apricots onto your skin as if that could cure you of all your sadness; as if it could take the need to get away and drown yourself until you were buried deep into the soil and there are flowers nestled into the crooks of your bones and you tasted of sweat, *****, and tears when at night you sit on the edge of your bed contemplating life or death between sobriety and a drunk that lingers for days on end clinging under your nails and to all the people who roll their eyes at you and say ‘you’ll get over it’ tell them to **** themselves; tell them that when they see apricots, they see sunshine, but you see death to infinity and beyond; you see all the broken promises that were whispered into the knots in your back you see the lily pads of roses that dripped with regrets and words that were never said words that gripped your lungs like a vice in the back of a car when you thought of love, you thought of apricot kisses rubbed against your lips; of rolled up aluminum foil of lighters drained of their fluids in a week time of the close to boiling water that invaded your personal space and reached the tip of your nose and of peach kisses from Georgia that dug its way into you; promising another day