My room has become a little less me
And a little more you
You've rubbed off on things by the shelf
Memories coated in a thin veil of you.
Dust prints on forgotten things.
Goodnight, goodnight, memories
Hung on the door.

Corners found branded with your name,
Initials carved into dry wall.
Things rearranged the way you like them,
The imprint of an old room grows tall,
Overtaking what's left.
Goodnight, goodnight memories
Stored in my drawer.

The girl in my bed reminds me less of her
And more of you, you see.
Or more strictly, how she could never kiss
Me, not like how your kisses could be.
Goodnight, goodnight, girl unbelonging
Next to me.

Sometimes
When the sky is clear
The stars spell out your name
Or maybe your face, turning away
From me
And meeting his instead.
And on darker nights,
A small ember and smoke
Is all I have to go on.

Sometimes
The crickets chirping your name
Is all I have to remember.
Smoke waters my eyes
And I thought I saw you
Waiting for me beyond the tree line.

Cars on country roads howl
To my teeth clicking in the cold.
It's easy to get lost in the nighttime
When your memory is all I have
To go on.

Constellations wink at me
And I breathe your name
Onto the window.
It fogs the line between tree and sky.
If I rubbed your name
Onto the glass
It'd just fade away before my eyes.

I never mean to write to you
But you find a way into the silence,
The spaces inbetween my words.
If I wrote you a song would it
Catch your ear
More than my poems do?
If anyone could play guitar
Would they woo you quite like his do?

Love is scary in the way it betrayed me
So casually, without warning
Wrapping its darling grip too tightly
Around my neck misguidedly
And pushing my face with still-gentle force
Into heavy water that stains trust with fear
It won't wash out soon.
Love sent me mouthfuls of watery kisses
To choke on in the pool
Unknowingly killing me.
But Love squeezed and played with my ruined body
And kept demanding more.
My broken body sunk to the bottom sometime after
Oh, poor Love,
It didn't know any better.

You said "I don't really dream,"
That time I told you my nightmares
I didn't believe you then
But now it makes sense.
Because what could a monster's worst nightmare
Possibly be?
Maybe it's me,
Just repeating all the scary things you said
Words that sent my heart to teeter
Over the cliff in my mouth.
When you blow through sin so wildly,
What could possibly scare you?
Maybe the cracked-mirror face you wear
Stops you from clearly seeing your fears
Or maybe you've been so scared before that
Nothing else can compare.
Maybe some tall secret keeps you in its shadow,
In a permanent nightmare.
So what happens at half past four
When the room is spinning and you
Fall just short of your bed
And sink into the floor
Do you even sleep at all?
Are you even alive anymore?
I think.
I think,
That they tortured you and told you it's okay
That the world locked you in a yellow wallpaper room
Where the paint soured and curled in on itself
Like thoughts spoiled in your head from holding on too long.

Caught myself playing
with fly husks by the windowsill
Trying in vain to make dead things work.
It's a pain pushing blood that's just going to
Spill.
My mouth fills with your words
but I swallow them
When there's no one else to whisper to,
Except paper-winged things
Wrapped in death on the sill.
Things could be worse
Than preaching to flies on the window,
Like when I would scream at the walls
About how they caught your ghost.
Our bedroom is haunted when I'm alone
With your thoughts, so
I might as well crack and find friends
In the bottle.
It's not too late to weave me
Into your great-escape plan,
We don't have to stay dead.
I'll take the long way or
Slip out the sixth story, because
The comforts of flying
Are the crashes shortly after
But watch me fall short
And lay down to die
At the windowsill.

Nightmares have a face
That breathes hot restlessness
Under my blankets.
When my eyes are squeezed shut
Trying to get that last dream
Out of this bed.
The one that I always have,
Falling through the ceiling and
Into bed with you.
The one that I always have,
Where I'm shaking you harder
Than I'm shaking myself,
But you aren't waking up.
Nightmares have a face.
It's you and you aren't breathing at all.

Nightmares have a face
A blank slate washed over
Now painted with gashes and
Bruises and tears and
Worn so proudly like a mask.
We know who the monsters are
But only remember before we sleep.

Nightmares have a face
That make me ***** late at night
Spending too much time looking in the mirror
Than I am washing out my mouth.
I'm scared to lift my feet from cold tiles
So I'll make a bed inside the tub.

Nighmares have a face
That whisper words with closed lips
And cold gray skin soaked in rain
Stifled by the dark of sleep.
I can't creep back into my bed
I couldn't tiptoe past the door.

Nightmares have a face
Filled by a shear of a grimace
That strike a cold sweat
Over every inch of me
Even with the lights turned on
Even with my palms on my chest
Telling me its okay.
Even when sliding over my heartbeat
I don't feel okay.