you held me by my wrists
you asked why i was shaking
my tongue was like lead
and my cheeks felt like lava

but i said,
i really love you.
and you said,
i really love you too.
and i said,
no, you don't understand

i want to hold your hand

sometimes i wish that
i could drown the sun or
stomp it right out of the sky

but i can't stand to hurt the moon like that
and i couldn't if i tried

i am sorry
for being afraid
to look you in the eye

when i know
just as well
the fear
of being forgotten

sledgehammers aren't so expensive
compared to the cost
of piecing bits back together

i'd never ask you to pay
so much
to undo something
deliberate and cheap
so how about just
don't

i stepped back out
didn't shout or pout
because i was fixed and good
like they said i would
be nice be grateful
and don't be hateful
try not to cry
try harder to be fine
now why the hell are you crying
just over realising
that you can go entire days
without thinking about dying

i think we self-destruct
differently

i feel as though you are a forest fire
(and maybe that's because you
are the warmest thing in my life but)
you are a force
you rage on
even if it means
leaving charred remains
in your wake
you are bright
you burn
you are so
incandescent
that people can look at you
and be so entranced
that they can forget the ashes
i feel as though maybe
that is how you feel
as you survive, you incinerate
but you incinerate to survive

i know there is life in you,
sometimes all it takes is a breath of wind,
a breeze to uncover seedlings and buds that have taken root already
i know for a fact that the world
would be left a shadow
without your heartfire

[i feel as though i am a decaying stump,
uprooted and on my side
(do you get it, because i'm always in bed and no longer growing and)
i'm all rot.
all i want is to be some kind of pretty,
without a care in the world,
i'm just waiting to feed the flowers]

i don't remember how it went, not exactly

i was without rest
or reason or hope
or anchor
and when i reached, my fingertips
couldn't feel
could hardly touch
forget grasping on to anything
i was a raincloud, heavy and aching to spill
but i had sunlight under my skull
and it made my brain burn
and the light poured through the cracks

it felt only right to hammer away
to just let my mind float like it needed to
to be bright
or be like a flood
like something shattered, slammed hard again and again against a wall, something broken over and over and over and over
like a piggy bank
hoping it's worth it
hoping it isn't just
hollow
inside

here is a man, half-mad during the night.

he is a man of the world,
who believes his senses.
adores his senses
and accepts their observations.

his eyes are sharp as he raises them,
cursing at the stars in their burning clusters,
begging for the drop of a curtain or a blindfold or blindness.
how dare the sky stay lit,
how dare the air stay crisp,
while his beloved is cold,
alone,
buried deep,
rotting.

he thinks:
the darkest the world can appear
is not dark enough.
it needs more,
should be deprived of more,
having just been deprived of one
so utterly much.
it should suffer as he does.
it should be despairing, devastated.
it should be crumbling into chaos.
but it acts as if it has not lost,
acts as if there is more to lose, still

and he knows that is not true

this is for you because
you’ve left me with a wound in my chest
it misses your knife–
the one that used to fill it

you’ve left me wide open,
thoughts of you spilling out,
like guts, but i’d prefer guts
because those, i can clean up

why wouldn’t i drink whiskey to water down the ache?
you stung on my tongue
made my stomach warm
made me do the bad thing
left my head feeling bashed in

it’s the next best thing
works almost the same
even better–i can take a pill for the pain
in the morning
when i’m trying to get it out of my system
it lets me

because i am selfish,
i think to myself,
you’re too beautiful to be gone
because you are selfish,
i know
that you’re beautiful wherever the ******* are

i write this
trying to spite you
it’s about you because
everything
is always about you

even without you

god, i ******* love you