Magic**

Read this to yourself.
Read it silently.
Don’t move your lips.
Don’t make a sound?
Listen to yourself.
Listen without hearing anything.
What a wonderfully weird thing, huh?

NOW MAKE THIS PART LOUD!
SCREAM IT IN YOUR MIND!
DROWN EVERYTHING OUT.
Now, hear a whisper.
A tiny whisper.

Now, read this next line in your best crotchety old man voice:

“Hello there sonny, does this town have a post office?”

Awesome! Who was that?
Whose voice was that?
Certainly not yours.

How do you do that?
How!?

Must be magic!!

The summer camp
Isn't what you love-
It's the trees
And the acceptance
That you don't find
Back home
Because back home
The air is filled
With too many chemicals
For anyone
To really accept anyone else

Because instead of
An occasional reminder
It's constant awareness
That we
Are the problem

So come here and pray
To your fictional gods
But know
That if there were a god
It wouldn't have created
Beings capable
Of only finding solace
In something so untrue
To the reality
Of themselves

flatten your tongue
slip it between your teeth

n.

your little lips
forming an elipsis

o.

put them together
and may you declare
a word you’d so carefully deny—
no.

you spell it out
on table tops
shout it
from the rooftops

and when cursed hands
seek to defile your shrine
may you exclaim
"i am mine"

Truth lies beneath your warm smile
that as time passed by
you've learned that in order to survive
you have to suffocate yourself with lies
telling you are loved
you are cared
you are blinded by hallucinations
you went to a place you called paradise
and filter your pain with i'm alright
in reality you are long dead
your soul is broken into pieces and shattered on the floor
bathe in your own tears
you wanted to tell the truth
you wanted not to hide
you wanted to tell them that you are suffering from anxiety, loneliness every night
that as she shut the door and said  Sleep tight
you took a blade and slits your beautiful skin and rest with tears in your eyes
you tried to hide your wounds with a smile and telling everybody you're fine

I kept chasing
you, as if
you were
a distant dream.
But dreams
are not always
dreams.
Sometimes, we have
nightmares too.