You want everything
That isn't yours.
We're patching the ugly pieces
And pasting over the bad photos.
Don't get sad
Get angry.
You're always angry at me.
I'm trying my best.
I'm bleeding from my hands.
If I could cut out any more of me
I'd look like a cadaver.
Maybe that's what I already look like.
I just want you to smile.
I will never be the face you want
When you open your eyes.
Things have been done backwards.
They are irreparable.

I am not the future
Nor am I the past.
I'm barely the present.
I'm a pillow to sleep on,
Not necessary,
Only comfortable.
I know that I can't fix anything.
I'll crucify myself trying.
I wish I was the one you think about
At night.
I wish you wanted to hold me
Half as much as you did her before.
Now the memory
Is here forever
Because of it.
My resentment is lead poisoning.
I think maybe
I should lay down.

I keep trying not to watch
Myself
Eating me alive.
You're mean when you're drunk.
I'm mean when I'm unhappy.
If you look closely
(But not really)
You just might see
A correlation.
I just wanted you to be
The gauze in my chest.
I can't fill the holes,
I was born with these.
There isn't even blood pouring out
Anymore.
The scar tissue happened
So long ago.
There's nothing that can be done.

I'll never be
The first.
No matter how many times
I **** myself
I won't be
The last.
I hear it
When you cough
But it's my lungs that are
burning.
I know someday
I'll open my eyes
And I'll have to remember
How to breathe
With water in my lungs too.

I do not have high hopes.
I don't have hope
At all.
While I stand here
Trying to close
The shutters in the storm
The hail
Breaks all the windows
And I crack
With every
Piece
Of glass.
I wasn't built for this.

I'm not a figure
Even when I wish I was.
I will always be looking from
Outside the window
Wishing I had the money
To truly change things
When I don't.
Even if
I found myself a billionaire
Blood is thicker
Than the layer
Of pennies at the bottom
Of a wishing fountain.

You sit there
Your eyes plastic
Like all the little dolls
I used to love
And I wish I could be that pretty.
Every time
You fix yourself
Onto something else.
I find myself buried
A little deeper in the toy chest,
And you won't remember
My old nickname in a while.
I'm trying hard
To forgive
And accept things
For the ugly way they are.
The more I fight the current,
The more I taste the salt
In the riptide.
I was never
Even
Here.

Why can't you just
Look at me.
She got the last laugh.
She has the permanent reminder.
I am temporary,
The current obsession.
I was never
Even
Here

All over you like a bad habit
And you were
Living on cigarettes
The way you live on pride
Christmas isn't the same
Just another drinking day
Venus flytrap in the kitchen
The closer you get
The more hungry
And yet
A touch away from death
The softest brush of your fingers
The clench in your teeth
I am bones and empty glasses
Snow on the roots of trees
Damp, despondent
Blank.
Like eyes on the fountain statue
I thought I'd take you to see
It's always about the children
Holding hands and
Looking forward to things
I don't know how
To look forward
Brutality
I can't scar myself anymore
I can't scare myself anymore.
Empty space
In my chest
A vacuum
Mud on the side of the highway
I feel like
If I drink just enough
I'll stay that way
Warm yet slightly empty
Rotting on the inside
Like the apple on the counter
I can't see through the windows
The breath from both of us
Chases out the reality
That's smothering our insides
Like a blanket
In the basement
Ending
So abrupt

What happens when
You stay up too late
And your chest feels empty still
You look up by yourself
Into the inky blackness
And see the soul of the sky
Staring back at you
And a million other tiny eyes
Silent
Watching
Wondering about everything
And I can't help but worry, too
While I'm trying to sleep
Of all the little things
Like the day I won't hear
You breathing in my ear
And it cripples me.
I wonder
When's the next time it'll rain
And when my well will run dry
How hard it must be
To start a war
A real one
Among men with guns
And options, opinions
There's a million on my mind
All the time
And I lit the fuse for every one
Sometimes when you look at me
I think I'm dreaming
I used to think our ribs maybe
Were separated sometime in creation
And we were puzzle pieces
Meant to be
In this big picture
But other times
I think that maybe
my heart strings
Are more attached to that
Pearl in the nether
Than the home under me
Or the key in my hand
And it's not your fault
I'm disconnected
Someday maybe we'll visit a tomb
Just maybe
And you'll feel how the wind
Can suddenly rush through
A plain stillness
And how the dust resettles
And nothing changes
The way the emptiness is pressing
So loud you can hear the blood
Behind your ears
And maybe then you'll know
How it feels to be illuminated
Yet dead at the same time
But not for lack of trying
And I think that maybe
We're both the same
An old set of catacombs
That seemingly never intersect
Yet somehow
If there's a shout loud enough
They echo into each other
And the whole place hums
We feel the same and somehow
My soul is still on its own plane
Am I selfish
Or simply nonexistent
And can I really truly
Love from this far away
I think the moon would know
How to love this deeply
Yet spend so much time watching
But I'm so small
And I wonder all the time
If that's something
I was ever meant to fathom

Who do you turn into
When the mornings lose their splendor
And have nothing left to offer
But another set of steps
And what does it feel like
To breathe fire, so deep
You **** your inner child
Because they shouldn't have to live like this
There's a million reasons why
All the eyes, behind your eyes
Are haunting
You've seen and known
So much
And it's eating you
The way you eat
The insides of your cheeks
When you're too nervous
The way you walk says
"I've drowned four times"
Once in childhood
Twice in the pool, on purpose
And a fourth in the bottle
On top of the fridge
And who am I writing to
What voice am I using
Am I as scared as last time
Am I half as empty
Fill me up with gold
So I can sell out
One last time
And I'll disappoint you then, too
I am in shambles
Wrapped in cables
Freshly broken
Thrown against the tarmac
Taking off to new horizons
In hell
And I can't tell you how it feels
To bleed so much
Your ears scream
For something other than your heart beating
Because you can't stand the sound
Ringing
And when you fill up the tub again
And everything smells like iron
You can't take it
This parasitic body
That you just want to ****
But that means losing yourself
Deeper and deeper
And it buries itself
Nesting
Hiding in your sins
It moves behind your eyes
Everything you've ever done
Wrapped up in a blanket
Pink and new
And you pushed it so far away
But the idea
Draws you back
Like a magnet the size of the sun
Maybe things aren't that bad
Maybe I'm not the medication
And then you ran so far
So far away
Because the thought of being human again
Hurts too much
And now it's just
Grasping at straws
Chasing breadcrumbs
Trying to remember
How it feels to be here
To really be here
Father
Son
Holy Ghost
The trinity to save us
The triage of forgiveness
And yet I can't face them
You can't grasp a white robe
With muddy hands
And so we try to do it ourselves
Hamsters on the wheel
And someday maybe
After years of evolution
We'll figure out
How to get out of the cage

Lately I think
It's been hard to function
Because of how bad I miss you
For when the lights looked like white to you
And how silly you would be
I miss your carefree spirit
It's been a while.

I pine for that stupid sweater
When all it did was rain
You held me in the snow once
Do you remember
Do you remember all the breakfasts
Do you remember how you couldn't stop kissing me
If your life depended on it

I guess I never focused on
The memories of yours
They never seemed like they'd go away
And now
The only thing I want
Is to watch you play beer pong that first time
All over again
And to break my charger one more time
To see your sleepy eyes at 6 am

I never got to ask too much
Id only heard the stories
Until he told me everything
He told me how he knew
And that he watched all of us
A God complex, but one we were all okay with
Even though being outside made him
"Claustrophobic"
I'll never forget that line

Not for as long as I live.


Without you here
Things are
Meaner
Things aren't
Quite upright
It's like everyone taped their lives back together
Because they had to work
And didn't have time to really fix anything
Or to go for groceries
Or to sleep really

I know that if I could wish for one thing
I don't even think I'd cure cancer
And I couldn't take the taxes on a million.
Maybe I'm an *******
I'd want to watch you watching people again
I'd want to see the love of my life
Be the love of my life
All over again
From the beginning
Because without you
He's buried under phone calls and worry
I've never seen love before I saw him

And you were honest so I did what you said
I watched his eyes light up for a big hair bow
You sent me messages
At the same time... just to embarrass me
And I watched him tell me all your stories
I remember when I told you I would come over
But I never did
And now I never will
When I owe you so much
And half my future was a gift from you
And I owe you
So much
I owe you
Everything

and yet
I was looking at a few drops of water
In my boat
On the ocean
There was so much more
Than I'll ever know
But for now I guess
We'll have to taste you.
The cigarettes
"Smoother than coffee"
Are a reminder

And I hope you got to meet the god I believe in
Because someday
I want to tell you thank you
And hug you like I never got to
Because I owe you
So much.

We all miss you
so much.

the littlest things get to me
things like
when your forehead wrinkled
the gap in your teeth
I was never one to hold a grudge
but I became a monument
the hypocrite.
philosophy taught me nihilism
you were the meaning
every breath taken exhales
a cloud of smoke and
sulfur
deep in my chest is clawing
the feeling
of your key against your car
the burn in your carpet
I wish I could wish you
nothing but the best
but instead I wish
you'd cut out your own tongue
lock yourself away
and stop making threats
see on the inside
we won't miss you
empty threats
empty threats
hypocrite.

ground zero
i become aware of boundaries
i am a dog chasing cars
i sing your voicemail to sleep
there are no surgeon general warnings
to tell me that
the objects in the mirror
are more depressed than they appear
so how do i tell you
that there are parts of my life
that move slower
without you in them?
or that i look for you every day
in emails & unanswered calls
in the sunrises
i didn't choose to be awake to watch
that i sometimes still stare at doorways hoping you would walk through them
   *stage 1 you tell your new lover you've got a splinter and they pull the sound of your body falling asleep on mine out of your fingertip
   stage 2 your new lover says something at dinner that makes you choke so they call 911 & the paramedics do the hymleich not knowing you would ***** our promises all over the the restaurant
   stage 3 your new lover surprises you by cleaning the house & washes the shirt you kept next to the bed, not knowing it was the last thing you had that smelled like me
after
people always ask
what was loving her like?
after a really long silence
i just say
"it must be nice"
but i never say
it's watching paint dry
i never say
it's a window seat in hell
i don't tell anyone
about the dreams
where i am reading you
bedtime stories
each one is a different way you die
& every time i can never save you
dreams where what i think
are angels in my bedroom
are just homeless versions
of myself you never loved
i have dreams
where i pay someone to shoot me
just to see if you would cry
just to see
if you would cradle my body
i don't tell people
that loving you is like
playing piano
for someone who can't hear
that it's hitting repeat
on my favorite song
& forgetting the words
every time it starts over
that it's finding out
there's no milk after you already
poured yourself a bowl of cereal
it's getting locked in the dark
& being told to
look on the bright side
that loving you is like
being reminded of what it felt like
the first time
you accidentally let go
of a balloon as a child
it's drowning without the water
it's the feeling you get
when you start to dance
& the song ends