Spilled milk becomes less of a cliché
When its spreading, eating the table away
And you're afraid to wipe it up without a towel
In case it swallows up your fingers as well.

I shouldn't have knocked the glass over, I know
It's too early for the messes to start
But I thought I saw you staring in the window
Memory part of my morning routine.

Milk-drops crawl to puddles on the floor.
White created a home in pores of the wood
Erasing letters photos and poems scattered there from days before.

And the biting glass in my palm
Isn't making this house any cleaner.
And the screaming
Only makes the house sound emptier.

why'd it take you breaking my heart
In two, to
Make you a better person?

Something about cold lips makes me warm.
Something about your voice sighing a swear
Into my neck, makes me grip the bed.
Something about you makes me moan.

Imagine me pressing my hand into your nape
And dancing down your back.
Your skin is so special
I can't pull away.
Tattoo your body onto mine,
So we can do this forever.

Play me soft, now loud
Let's make music with our bodies
Chaotic choruses under moonlight
Shaky strums finding our song
Just right.

The silence in between kisses is golden when
I can hear you begging for more.
Let me explore so I can find my favorite spots,
And yours.

Something about my name on your lips
Gets me shivering.
Something about your body rips
Me apart and puts me together again.
There's something about you
That no one else can outdo.
There's some things that you do
That no one else knows how to.

Please remember me as something happier
Than the sinking of your heart
To the bottom of your chest.
I'm not the thing that pulls the air from the room.

Please remember me as something stronger,
Maybe nobler,
Than a stopwatch dangled from a fraying rope
Having staring contests with falls.

Please remember
I am not the pillow you're punching
Please remember this was not about you
And believe I never meant it to.

Tell me about love
How your mom is doing fine
Tell me about the girl from class
And how Sam drank too much wine.
But don't call me to scream.

Think of me at peace
Not someone who ran out too soon
With the door wide open.
Remember when I got you drunk
On full moons.
But don't let me occupy your mind.

Please remember,
It does get better.
You don't just get
"Used to it."

There's ****** up,
Then there's
Ruining yourself enough
To forget you and your circumstances
Just for a few hours of sleep.

******* for making my head hurt.
I want to shake myself off
And float away from here.
I want to stop seeing and hearing
And thinking of you.

Stay away from me and stop
Sending me back to the first square
Of the board.
I don't want to keep tapping myself
Through each step of the game.

My head is dull and not here
And I can't stop seeing your smile
Wrought into my eyes
The harder I shut my world down
The more it grows in size.

You're a **** good liar
When I look at you and think
My love still might be there.
Well I don't want to be here
I don't want to be here,
With you.
We're playing tug of war and
I'm afraid to pull and pull
And find you cut the wire (again).

I hate not knowing a dream
From a memory.
Like is that tattoo on your shoulder
Real?
You're too distant for me to test it gently.
My hand even shakes at the thought
Of its flesh reuniting with yours
Oh god,
My fingers whimper like dogs,
Begging for more.

But there's nothing to touch.

I think I've been here before
But your things are a bit fuzzy,
Like the drawings on your door
That I never laid attention to.
This night can't be real
Because it's going too well.
But I'll keep up the charade
Even though, I know, your eyes are gray
Not blue.
I'll pretend not to notice a little longer.

Maybe I should have stayed asleep.

Dreams leave me hungry for the real
Taste of you
That I won't wake up to.
I can't remember your precious voice but
Before I woke up you said,
"Moving on for me is just as hard."
But I knew that statement couldn't be true
Even from a dreamed you.

My nanna said
"Kid,
Don't eat a whole-bowl-full
Of sugar
Cause when your tongue's
Coated in it
You can't taste anything else."
There's so much more
Than just sweetness
To explore.
I stopped having a sweet tooth
When I met you.
I still over indulged.

Some days you need
The rain
To sit in your
Gutter, or
Wash the roads
clean of your plans.

Some times the rain
Ends the day
Early
And closes the sun
Behind clouds.
I didn't want
To go out
Anyway.

And on these days
The rain
Hides your own drops
From your face.
What a perfect place to cry.

What a perfect time
To say
Goodbye.

I'd stand in the shower until the water runs dry
And there's no more drops to drip from my fingertips.
I still myself when anyone else would shiver
These moments have stopped being instances
And grown into forevers.

Let's run away from time and here
You can figure out the rest yourself.
Demons underneath us will be too weak to scream,
And I'll be too free to breathe.

Are you afraid of the future?
Nothing scares me more than a ticking clock.

Being wrapped up here hasn't been so much about family and friends
But instead something about yelling "I'm not yours"
To the walls and the doors
That have shrunk by the inches, more every year.

I see their hands come through the ground
And let them drag me down neck deep
Whispering I'm the only one and how I belong
Pulling me back into this hometown mess with a sickening song.

Am I afraid of the future?
Ask me what scares me when my time runs out.

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.

Smoke has a way of
Painting hazy lines in the air
That somehow resemble your face.
And it feels like you're here.
Even when you're missing.
The smoke makes you less of a ghost
And more of a memory fondly remembered.
I wish the burn would last forever.
I wish I could look at you
For a minute more.

There's something so empty in your voice.
Not a sadness, or a longing.
But rather your "something human"
Long since gone.

Something is missing,
Something is not quite right.
Is it a draft slipping in through your ribcage, whistling out through your teeth?
I can hear it snake by so easily, with all the hollow underneath.

You sit on long metal tables,
Each one colder than the last.
Doctors always asking where it hurts.
Do you ever feel tired of not having an answer?
Have you ever lifted up your shirt
And showed them what you can't say?
Or are you afraid they'd step back and gasp?
Because there's a disgusting gaping hole in you,
That no decent person could fill.

I was made to touch your lips. Of that I'm sure.

Whatever follows I'm not so sure about.
But I'll enjoy the tumble with you. The reckless abandonment that plays on your lips after the first jump forward is unforgettable.
While it lasts, I'll enjoy the drop down into the rabbit hole, where we watch days and months wrap around us.
I'm sure you'll figure out what's next when we reach the bottom. I'm sure. I'm sure...

But if you must go now and leave me hurdling through the dark, please... Let me trace your lips once more. Twice. Let me remember you well when I reach the bottom. I hope I figure out what to do. Before I meet the ground.

1:52, Saturday afternoon
Aunt and grandma chatting through sips of tea
About a poor couple, light perished so swiftly
Now-cold bodies riddled with ******.
I thought quietly to myself:
Did they die contently? In each other's arms?
Or did those arms instead grip
At the fading sensation of skin
Begging not to let go,
As the euphoria turned to pain
As death crept into their bones?

It's times like this, during thoughts of these,
When my mind leaves the room
And travels towards thoughts of us
And how if I had to die, I'd die in your arms
Or in bed, with our bodies almost touching,
Smiling at the lightning that dances in the spaces between us,
Can you feel it?

And at that moment of collapse
When my lungs stop rising
I'll draw in my last breath of you
That darling smell of yours, indescribable.
So I must ask,
Could that couple have possibly felt
What we can feel when we lay in the dark,
When I trace roadmaps onto your body,
When your warm breath paints words
Around the nape of my neck?

I don't know. I don't care.
It's easily just as deadly.
But there's nowhere I'd rather be
Than addicted to you
At 1:52
On a Saturday afternoon.

Put your trust in me?
I don't think so.
I'll leave you and you'll die alone.

Let's put this to bed
And put me to sleep
Before I get out of hand.
Let's put this to bed
Before you start to believe in
My fabricated sincerity.
I'll kick myself all the way home.

Please let me run away
Before I have to wipe the blood
From that exit wound.
Let me run far away
From the thud of your heart
Echoing through my chest.

This wasn't always me
It's not the way I was supposed to be.
I should have been more scared of the cold.

What's it feel like to be a monster?
How hard is it,
Trying to apologize when your own twisted teeth
choke you?
I wonder what you think about when you look
in the mirror.
I wonder.
How you even live in that skin,
it's a mystery.
You spend nights self-medicating
to deal with the fact,

But isn't that where it all started?