I cannot believe I'm here. I have been driven to new limits of my being. I was mad at you, and as I lay in bed without sleeping for the fourth night in a row due to your careless handling of my heart, I needed something to fill the absence you left in your wake.
Get up and go smoke a cigarette.
No, I need something stronger.
How about a shot of whiskey?
I don't want to taste its unpleasant tones that remind me of my past.

I just took a pain pill for the headache that always accompanies my tears...
Take another. Two won't hurt.
I don't want to wait to feel better, I need immediate relief. I won't have enough rest to get through tomorrow, another disappointment in store.
Take another. Take it
differently.
So I snorted a Vicodin. And I'm not proud. I'm new to this level of desperation, and oh my, how I pity all those who have ever done this before me.

Until.
Until now.
Until, now, I feel.
I feel better.
A new sensation arises in my face and in the back of my throat. I can practically feel the neurons dancing around in my brain, in my skull.
Inside of me. In my heart and body and mind.
In my skin. Dancing.

I remember we used to dance. Your hand cradled mine with the delicacy you always use with me. Every word you speak you're framing a moment in which you think I will finally
lose it
if you're not careful enough.
Do not handle me like a child. I cry, not like a child, but as a woman weeping for a man that is dead to her before he's even left the room.
And you shut down as soon as you see a single ******* tear.

Am I not worth any effort after all this time?
When I make you mad, we talk about it and I apologize. I'm so sorry.
So sorry.

I will retreat into myself. I will reach my deserted island where you can't reach me.
No one will get to me here.
I'm surfing waves on seas you will never sail.
I'm building castles in sand that you can't ever put your hands on.
I am catching rays from an alien sun.
I am experiencing something completely new! And you are only feeling my cold silence.
That's new, isn't it?

Instead of hearing my pleas to mend our busted road of communication, you see me happily
waving from the other side of a massive divide.
I'm so sorry.
I'm smiling.
I can't hear you.
I'm not that sorry anymore.

And for a moment, I wonder which you prefer.
I wonder if you'll be happy with my new habit for the first several weeks only because you don't know what's mellowed me out so well.
I am steamrolled, my true emotions flattened on the ground around me.
Beyond my reach.

I'm not reaching out.
To you.
To me.

I'm surfing seas. I'm building castles, of which I am the queen, a luxury you never allowed for me.

This is new. And I'm not sorry.

October, you are made of dust and I am a gun.
I killed men once.
When I lifted her veil I felt all of their features melt into one.
I smiled, it was all your storm in me.

October, you are a briefcase. You are six months long.
Tonight, there are tigers reaching out over my head
and I am your god out dancing on his weekend, say,
would you look at all your glass, bursting at the seams?
Would you ask him if I ever got there? Would you tell me why I keep pulling your explosive from my chest like a name label? Would you explain how metal peels as easy as skin with the right amount of madness?

October, I am no more than your casualties.
I am every sadness they ever said you would be.
Silver hands. I can carry these men but I cannot hold them up.

Mother, I thought I saw you standing there but it was just a bullet trail in the darkness.
I am buried in all of your letters, imprinting the both of us on the backbones of these papers;
they tell me I've become all the keys you sent.

October, you are a ballroom with all that break break break and I am falling but I haven't even left the ground yet.
When I rain down on you remember me, like the first sunset you ever wrapped yourself up in, and when they say
that I was never a stronghold, show them all the letters I tried to write you but never sent,
tell them about how the flesh ripped from my bones and left me a relic,
ask them if they can hear me breathing over all that storm.

October, you are confetti leaves falling under tyres on your wedding day,
and I can't be the light that catches them, I can't tell you that this world will wait long enough for you.
So tonight I am burning my name like it's the last thing I'll ever have.
And when they bring us home in our body bags,
remember that the choices we made were the choices we wanted to make.

October, you are a dust storm, and all your colour's left in me

how are you?i hope youre well.im damp and sore, but
living.
ive been walking through the rain all day.i know i'm foolish.
i know it rains all the time here and water just makes the blue bleed from my hair.
my shoes are soaked. my knees are muddy,
all my sentences keep breaking before
i can complete them.
sorry for not being pretty while i cry.
he led me through the woods while i slipped in the mud behind him.i dont want to be here.i want to go home
but i don't know how to leave, i need you to lead me back.
sorry.i know its not your job to
clean up after my mistakes,
i keep killing myself for unworthy causes.
tell me how much you need me.tell me you don't love me.
i am not grinning, i'm baring my teeth at my reflection.
he keeps speaking to me.im just trying to watch the rain,
would you do the same?
you're uncomfortable with silence, i know.
your shoulders, sloped, broad but weak.
my lips,  wet from rain, sticky from smoke.
hot-headed and cold-handed, i burned my tongue
on the inside of my own mouth.
when i held your hand, your fingers froze
and broke off one by one.
{frostbite never tasted so sweet.}
did you say that or did i think it?i thought we understood each other.
im biting my cheek and wondering why nothing feels right.
this is the fiftythird glass of water
i've drunk today.i can drink things other than guinness.i know
you dont like me when im drunk.
you dont like me when im high.you dont like me when ive been awake for 72 hours,
biting my knuckles and bleeding on my best shirt,
but thats ok.
ive been fracturing bones in dark rooms all my life.
i broke my shoulder on a closet door,
hiding from a celebration,
no crying so no one hears.
my mouth tastes so bitter, no wonder
you never wanted to kiss me.
don't slam the door so hard.i feel it in my skull like it hit me
and not the doorjamb.
don't ask me if im hungry.in my mind,
ive been vomiting for the past two weeks.
i am piercing my tongue with steel.
i could say it started two years ago
that i fired a shotgun in my mouth and
the wounds said they loved me enough to stay and
ive been spitting buckshot ever since.i could say
two years ago,
i kissed someone who didnt care and now,
just the taste of strawberries makes me want to tear out my tongue, but
you know already know
my mythomania is less a disorder and more
a habit i cultivated
to convince myself i was worthwhile.
i like to pretend something made me this way, something made me
see myself as a broken lock
and not a person.
it hurts to admit i've been like this from birth.
im deconstructing clocks in my head.
im extracting your loose fingernails like
garden spikes from soil.
ive had this dream before.
im descending distorted stairs in the dark,
im walking on sheet ice.
im sleeping until the sun sets and waking up in a cold sweat.i dreamt that i couldnt stop dreaming about you.i dreamt of
gently pressing needles through my tongue
while you read my diary.
i am a house half-constructed.a candle half-lit, and you are a forest half-grown
or half-burned,
sometimes it's hard to tell.
i am waking with knots in my hair for the first time in years.im combing them out.
im drying my hair and thinking of you.
im throwing out my umbrella.