bend back the truth and make it hurt.
i want the sting across my cheek of your words because mine are never good enough for me.
i want the truth of the moment to shock me to my core, to freeze my soul, to make my eyes sputter out and my nose to bleed and stain the pages of this really ******* good romance novel because blood makes everything so much more real, doesn’t it? i want you to disappear and find me in my dreams like a banshee, to make it so you are never forgotten, an always present voice in my ear reminding me of what there used to be.
i want    what there used to be.

but that doesn’t exist anymore
after all, time is never ending and the length of a millipede so how can i dare to question it? for if i do then must i also question the empire state building and the size of my heart and the oxygen in my veins that now escapes with the pooling guts that line my body, laughing and crying and still on the water-stained rug in the bathroom.

To think that this pain became nourishment.
They drink it up, you see them.
Fertilizer for the future
waiting under the oaks that grow from our eyes.
Our stories become theirs, taken by time, and then taken again, but no, not writ in the stars.
We wait in the soil while they rise to a world of their own choice.

To think that we, who created so many, do not choose our own end.
Fated to trip on a fell tree, destined to die alone in a shrouded cloak?
Our breath brought unity and hope
but its absence brings us only despair.
The us is important there.
They still have what’s left.

To think that our remnants are crumbs between book pages
Coffee stains on tables, worn
with love but tired still.
We stabbed our arteries for an ink well
Wrote ourselves deep into the paper.
We gave it all up for them, but we loved ourselves all the same.

To think that while they can ascend to heaven
we must fall down to hell.

Oh, the curse of a truth-telling tongue.

if all the universe is entangled
if we are all opposites in order to exist
intertwined
we are tied, we are
victims of fate, bound
by the very nature of the impossible
but measuring renders particles split apart
cut that crimson thread that binds us
for we know our truth
the probability
            the possibility
now certainty
ceased to exist
and so once again we’ll search
left in a maze
left in the dark
my tears won’t reach you
and your scars won’t be mine

the earth is an ornament. a terrarium within a glass sphere, a balance, a system. a beauty. filled with light and hope and green and truth and blue and love and grey and orange and red. filling with haze and acidity from our mouths and from our eyes, spilling out into the rivers, our brains and guts splattered on pavement like that salamander who could not move fast enough. we dig out roots and networks beneath our feet and crush them to pump out fog and smoke. our bones are those long buried by time and grief. will that be me one day? will i grow up as something to dribble out of fuel tanks to allow for movement not nearly as fast, not nearly as efficient as i once was? you made me into something less of myself, you tore my tongue from my throat and punctured my eyes and gagged my mouth. you cut my wrists with a butcher knife and froze me solid, you ground me to char and let my blood my blood my blood be your ichor. you who never fought for me in life will fight to tear me limb from limb, pour my soul into 3mL, no, 2L, no, 1.65L, yes, yes, that will be enough. enough for what? to power another mile, another crush, another burn? is that my only future? they say those in glass houses should not throw stones but shattering is all i know to do, if i do not break myself i will stay whole and you will break me all the same.

we the invisible

we, who learned from a young age
impossibility is accepted
verity, your mutability
every aspect of you is subject to change
my girl, my girl
empty eyes that look but don’t see
you
oh, how your tongue should bleed
under the crash of your silence
rip the blanket, they said
though you were only taught to sew
i paint myself to hide
razor cuts and scars
everything i’ve made for you, till death
do us part