When you talked to me
I hope it bumped your confidence
I hope my skin
Made you feel like Adonis
I hope I tasted exactly like
Whatever you'd been missing
I hope my makeup stained your t-shirt
And you'll remember how
You felt when I let you touch me
For the very first time
You'll remember it forever
So help me God

So many years have gone by
But I've been sitting at the table, stuck
Looking for all my puzzle pieces
And it's always incomplete
You took every part of me
And built your life's mosaic
While im left
Missing edges
All holes in the middle


And I hope
The next time you kiss her
I hope it makes you sick
I hope she tastes like venom
And I hope she bites you back
I hope you learn how bad it aches
To stop your own bleeding
To climb out of this pit
Stacked high with ruined moments
Soaked and steeped in blood for years

And I hope
Most of all
You crawl home on all fours
Across miles of eggshells
Like the ones you made me stand on
Every minute
Every day

I hope you someday have to wonder
If you're full of dust inside
And if they ever cut you open
Would you feel it at all?

Because even though
Every day I'm born again
My cells are new.
You haven't touched me.

You still haunt the empty spaces
In the back of my mind
Your fingers wrapped around my veins
And held me down in place
There's a scream in my mouth
And it sounds like
Alexander


And while I'm busy treading water
And trying to survive
There's so many people to talk to
But nobody to listen
When the pieces fit again,
The puzzle is old and bored
And everyone wonders
Why it took me 10 years
Just to lay a ******* outline

The truth is
I've been missing the picture
Since the day I let you in.

Sometimes i can’t cope with the mundane
The abrupt end of it all
Everything stops making sense
I watch my own body from above
So i surround myself with people
Very Passionate People

There are those so drowned in anguish
So doused in dread
They take up the room with it,
Like something between
vinegar and gasoline
There’s weight to the air, like iron
The ache pouring from their skin
Like spores
Taking root in my cracks and sockets
And in my soul
And in my memories
Embedding their nightmares
In between every floorboard
And every time it happens,
I feel whole again

There are people i see
Who’s smiles scream like the sun itself
Their skin smells like honeysuckle
They are always warm
Every breath, every word
Feels like new life
Like dandelion wishes, and soft grass
Kisses on picnic blankets,
Driving too fast
They burn white hot, yellow,
Setting fire to my judgement,
And every time it happens,
I feel whole again

There are those who like lanterns
Burning on a dark road in a new moon
And you’re a moth to their flame
But every word they speak
Whips hard enough to split the skin
Every time your eyes lock
Your body aches, like lead poisoning
Their eyelashes make your bones brittle
You’re too enthralled to tell them that
Yes, you’re terrified
But they make you writhe like a snake
They grip you just as hard
And you like it
They stain your bedsheets
Sickly, rotted green
And every time it happens
I feel whole again

And there are others
Blank canvases
Locust shells
Hallowed out trees,
Ruined by pestilence
Forgotten, left to fester
Left behind generations ago
It’s a miracle there is breath in those bodies
It’s a wonder they have souls anymore
Do they know that they’re ghostly
That they’re in purgatory?
I don’t think they have the will
Still, their motions are effortless
A cotton dress on a downhill stream
Something beautiful, taken so far away
Sunken to the depths, despite all things
And every time it happens,
I feel whole again

The trouble is
In knowing this
Encyclopedia of personages
The yellowpages of my life
I can’t stay vacant this long
There will be color on these walls again
Photos in these halls again
And i cannot choose them
All the people i meet and see
Leave their fingerprints on all the mirrors
Staining what i see when i look for myself
And it seems that
After too long
I’ll remain the marble statue
With a pretty new visage,
A beautiful, distracting mask
Made entirely of
Everyone I’ve ever met

When hell freezes over

And i can’t feel the cracks in the walls
I’m not sure anymore
“These times are the worst times”
And what comes after

What if i don’t want to know
Why do babies die
When they’ve never done anything
The most innocent
This earth will ever feel
Is when it’s reclaiming
The porcelain faces
With eyes closed

Maybe it’s because
The longer we spend waiting
Like opening windows
When it’s supposed to rain
“It gets worse before it gets better”

But there is no contest
It’s just comparison
Plath wrote a novel
About how hard it is to die
Your body doesn’t want to

But your soul can’t sleep anymore
You are tired
From bouncing off the padded walls
Inside your skull
So much it feels like
Your own thoughts have bruises
Concussions within concussions
It hurts to think
The engine doesn’t start

And every day i try to sleep
Except
I’m still awake
Because it doesn’t matter anymore

We spend our time
Waiting out the storm
(Even when it’s in the windows)
Waiting for the sunshine
But all it means is
The storm will ruin everything

And no amount of sunlight
No kisses
No daisies
Will ever make the floorboards dry up
Will fix the ruined wallpaper
No open windows
Will air out this house

Everything settles
Like dust on the mantel
The floorboards pop
Like the elbows of tree branches
Bucking together,
Shivering in winter
The house is restless
But too old to move
Too tired
Too heavy

And so am i.
There’s still something in it
Us
We
And still so empty at the same time.

If the room is vacant
Is it still a room
Or is it a tomb
That’s been desecrated
Put it back the way it was meant to be,
Full inhabitants
The dead haunting both places.

Because i am fearless
To be honest
When you don’t feel
I am plastic and
Tattered rugs in the hallway
I am
Cigarette smoke stains
Nicotine yellow and
Placid green
rotting from the inside out
Like a cavity
You’ve always been too poor to fix
Yet... not an ache like that
Too easy to ignore
And when it’s past the point
It falls out, and life goes on

No

I am a wildfire
Burning everything alive
And too big to put out
Everyone can see it
Everyone’s afraid
The very smoke from my own destruction
Is killing the skies
Suffocating on top of the heat
Like a hurricane, hotter
A god of fifty thousand degrees

And yet... they see it coming
All they can do is
Hope i burn myself out
And don’t take their lives too

And there’s nothing
No open windows
No kisses
No daisies

Can do about it

We danced
All through the evening
Now I’m stained with your cologne
I never was supposed to
And i don’t want to go home

See my thoughts are riddled with you
Like a termite, my chagrin
How do i go to sleep now,
I let my deepest worries win

And what am i to do
With nothing left to swoon
I’ve lost my only axis,
A planet with no moon

When I'm looking for a home
With you
I remember
I don't want to live
Anywhere

And it's times like this I realize
When I'm
So good at acting
I forgot how to live
Nothing is real

It's nights like this
When everything I should love
Feels like snow
It should burn
It should hurt
It should be something
To feel
But it's too cold outside
And now it's in

I don't love the child
Who used to love me
Or the family that
Always welcomes me home
I don't know
How to hold my pets
The way I used to
I feel like a robot wearing gloves

And maybe someone will
Sing songs to my
Skeleton
A hundred years from now

I've never made an impact
I've never taken a step
And now it's just a treadmill
Cyclical hell
And I want to lay down

I'm tired
Too tired.

Can you not see it in my face
Etched in my hands
Nobody was surprised

How I've got nothing left
Inside
I am blood and paper
Human and irony
Empty basements

And it's moments like this
I understand
That the pills
They
Don't
Work.

I have become
The queen
Of my own dreamscape
A hell I built
Of myself
And for myself

I have seen the blood
And smelled the sulphur
I have touched the caked on dignity
And erupted from the grave

That I dug for myself
And dig deeper
Every time I close my eyes
The thoughts dance for me
Writhing masses of guilt
And things I pine for
Things I'll never have

Because the time is not now
But when I sleep
The time is right
Because there isn't time at all
And I wish,
if not for this self inflection,
That I'd forget like I'm supposed to

I used to only remember
The splatter and heart attacks
That haunted me
The external demons
That I swore would devour me
Absorb my soul
And burn me alive
From the outside

The dreams that made me sleep walk
But now it's as if
Even in my waking
I am deeper
In my own internal nightmare
A hell built by myself

The new queen
Of all things ****** up
Of broken mirrors
And repressed memories
With every blink I take
I am discovering
A deeper capacity
For longing

And I have opened wounds
I never knew were there
And it's as if
My skin means nothing
Because when I sit in the black throne
My muscles twist
And tear
And convulse while still on my bones

With every breath I inhale
The concrete settles
On my bones
And in my blood
And on my family

We're all in this together
The foundation
Is cracking
And soon this house
Will burn down with me

I dive into an ocean
So deep within the grey matter
I didn't know existed
Things
Get
Heavier
I wonder when I'll crack from the pressure