I can feel it all soaking into my skin,
My downfall, the ****** of everything,
Every ending shakes hands with every new beginning yet sticks around to see it all spiral downward into the pit of the next "new beginning",
I've ruined a lot now, I don't know why I have the tendency to keep going,
Failure, my fear of success, my fear of failing successfully and never successfully being successful,
Or maybe it's just my nerves

I spend my day-times gluing together pieces of reasons why my soul is worth saving,
I spend my night-times in my bed poking my fingers with every piece of my heart that's breaking,
There is no one here to blame besides myself,
But why must I be so hard,
Why must I torture myself,
It all comes back to me anyways, so why do I ever give any of it away

Calm me down,
Calm me down,
Please just do something, anything to calm me down,
Cigarettes stopped calming the nerves and alcohol never stopped tasting bitter

I can't sleep, I can't eat,
I can't even shower because ******* warmth reminds me of when I felt it all inside of me, gleaming out like a sun who's crying to be the source of something,
I miss the way happiness flooded me,
I miss the way sadness used to be too terrified to even look at me,
I stop at every crack in the sidewalk because when we stepped on them together you joked about breaking my mother's back,
You never mentioned anything about breaking hearts, or how you're so good at it

I sit and watch traffic, wondering where everyone is going,
Wondering what everyone is trying their best to run away from

I wonder what I'm trying to run away from

I wonder if there's even anything to run away from

Every poem's about who I don't want to write about anymore,
The ones who got away,
The ones who chose to leave,
The ones I pushed out,
All of them

These poems are full of the skeletons from past friends and lovers, gone but not forgotten,
Never forgotten actually,
My mind could never get rid of any of them

I'm feeling it all,
All of them all over me,
Suffocating me,
Radiating a toxic hymn from the depths of everything wrong with this world,
Humming a toon that could only be heard through the ears of the broken,
An apocalyptic afterthought of an apocalyptic messiah

If I choose to die, who will live?
If I choose to live, who will die?

How long until I am forgotten,
How long until I am a skeleton,
How long until I am just an afterthought,
An unpopular opinion thrown onto a popular back burner,
Everywhere I go, I have my back turned,
Everywhere we went, she couldn't look me in the eye,
I can't even look myself in the eye

How long until I forget about you?
All of you,
All of you,
How long?

Heartbreak and exhaustion have made a permanent home in my bones and they both are having such a good time ******* with me that neither of them want to leave,
I wish everyone who came into my life felt the same way,
I wish I had the guts, all I have are the bones,
I'm sturdy in my wants but flimsy with my needs,
I want you, yeah, but I don't need you,
It'd just be really nice

No, not the kind of nice to just take up my time and make me forget about all of the bad things,
I'm talking about the kind of nice that could only be accurately described using a situation such as kissing you to my favorite bands, or wrapping my arms around you when you're feeling cold,
You say you're always cold

Honey pie, you're the apple of my eye,
The girl they're always talking about,
The girl who has a ring to her name,
A certain kind of charm that only you could see,
You're the only one I see

I don't want, I need

When I'm upset, I don't cry, I scream

You're worth so much more than this,
Let me wrap flowers around your head and crown you princess of the garden

This isn't me convincing you,
This is me convincing myself,
Getting caught in your typhoon could ******* either further into you, or away from you, but I'm here and I'm settled down to ride out the storm, regardless of the outcome

I'll try not to get my heart broken, but I can't promise anything

I remember the first time I saw the glare of a sunrise on your eyes,
Everything was beautiful, even the cracks of the sidewalk

We stayed up all night digging to lay cement, everything was so perfect,
Little did either of us know that we left space in the cracks for weeds to grow

You shined into me and out from my joints sprouted flowers,
They were lavender and lilac; it was always hard to tell the difference between them because of their color

As time went on, not everything stayed as beautiful as it once was,
My flowers wilted and frowned, and so did I,
Weeds took over and wrapped my body in vines, suffocating me with my own breath,
Not being able to catch a glimpse of what's eating you up inside is like watching a flower get trampled on without being able to do anything about it

A year and a day later and I am lying on the sidewalk by my house with lilacs in my hands, finally realizing the difference between lavender and lilac

Over a lifetime, I never loved her,
Empty gas tanks,
Empty cigarette packs,
Empty paint bottles,
Empty minds,
Empty hearts

I keep carrying the dead with me,
Burying them in the back of my mind to form some kind of understanding of why things are the way that they are,
Why people don't finish what they started,
Why hearts continuously ache and break at the smaller things,
Why her father never loved her mother enough to stay around to see her grow up,
At least he isn't around to see her laying in the hospital bed,
At least he isn't around to see her struggle with the thought of why her father never loved her enough

Over a lifetime, I never loved her,
This absence is dizzying,
Pitch black,
Pitch black,
Swallowed by the memories of agony,
Every moment awake is a moment my God should've never breathed into me,
My god, I never should've let your breath fill my lungs

I keep carrying the dead with me,
Burry them all, burry them all,
Give me some sense of dignity,
Don't let me slip on the souls of the broken,
Don't let me become one,

Over a lifetime, I never loved her

Wishing for sleep but realizing there is no other place I would rather be,
An anchor tied to the feet of a man who only knows how to embrace everything when it is thrown at him,
Exhausted, I guess you could say that,
But it is this lack of knowing how to deal with surviving, repeating the words, "I'm trying, I'm trying" over and over until is the last thing he knows how to say to himself without self hatred,

I am alive, yes, I am alive

This ship is a sinking ******* but my god I'll tie the ropes to the cliffs and pull myself ashore,
When it comes to being happy, really, I'm not sure,
I guess I need to stop making it seem like being happy is a chore,

For the last seven months and three weeks, I have been beaten down and choked out of what I have every right to see,
I have every right to be

Happy

I have every right to
Breathe,
****,
Fight,
Light,
This cigarette and smoke away the stress I am incapable of getting rid of myself

I am handicapped

No, not in the sense of being broken,
No, not in the sense of being unable,

Stable: not likely to change or fail,
My attitude will change and my ambitions will change,
But I will not fail,

Being frail is something I am used to,
Being weak is something I am used to,
If I keep telling myself I am not used to being happy, I will never be happy

I want to be happy,
I want to sleep without nightmares,
I want to wake up and want to,

I want to be happy

If I keep telling myself I am sad, I will never be..

*Happy

3.
If I blink hard enough, all of this will go away,
I wish you would just go away,
I have lived in your shadow for way too long, I need to get away,
Why can't I get away, I would do anything to get away,
You do anything to get your way,
You drink from the bottle while staring at me and the only words I have the guts to say to you are, "I love you", regardless of how badly I can feel the sting in my chest

2.
It's working, but I'm still in love with you,
I stopped dreaming in circles because my mind has grown so tired of the thought of you that the only thing that pops into my head when your name is mentioned is, "****, this hurts, a lot",
I still smile on rainy days and I still laugh at my friends jokes, but neither of those things make me smile as hard as the first time I held your hand, or the first time you joked about how your cat had a thing where he'd lay on your head when you were trying to fall asleep,
You're always in my head when I'm trying to fall asleep,
I just wish you weren't

1.
****, this hurts, a lot,
But I'm trying,
I can do this,
Your mother always told you not to stay out passed your bedtime, but no fun ever happens before midnight,
I hope you think of me in your drunken stupor,
When you were drunk, you used to call me and tell me that you thought I was the best thing in the world, that you loved me, that I was everything right for you,

I'm blinking continuously now, but none of it is helping,
****, this hurts, a lot,

If I was everything right for you, why did you only talk to me when everything bad was happening to you