And so I'll run away from the deaths
The heartbreaks and the wars
And lock myself away

There's ivories and ebonies
Rosewood and steel strings
Horse hair and pearls

I'll stare at white pages for hours
Deciphering their strange locked codes

The way I truly feel
I've let my soul take flight
And it's never coming back

My life is filled with song
Music runs my life
My heart
And it's never setting me free

I want to
Do shots of Jack
And
Wander around a city
Drunk and lost
And
Cry on the sidewalk
About lost love and new love and
Just love in  general
And
Hurt myself
(Accidentally)
So I can't feel the
Shame until later
And
Get lost in my
Cloud of cigarette smoke
And
Let myself be sexually abused
And
Feel so ashamed
That I walk around
Hollow
And
Have scars on my cheeks
From my burning
Rivers of mascara
And
Sit in an ally
And
Try to rub off my tattoos
And
Cry myself to sleep
If I ever find
My way back home.

Why?
WHY do you always
show up
in my life
at all the wrong times?
I told myself
I was done.
You gave me
every reason
to give you up.

I want you
to walk back in this room
so I can
                                                             ­   panic.
So I can
savor the sheer
     confusion
you put me through.

There's
no reason
for me to even
consider
giving you a
                       third chance.
I've moved on.
You are my past;

"last call, percussion."

I fell in love
With the way you
Held me and my tears.
I love the way our
Ghosts
Wave to each other
When I look into your eyes.
I fell in love the night
You put your arm around me
While I slept on your chest.
And you held your hand
On my arm and
Slowly
but surely
Our hands crept together.
I love the way
Our smiles crack
Pieces falling
Into each other.
I fell in love with
Talking you out of
Killing yourself.
We're just two
Broken people
Who fell in love with
Each other's
Pain.

I don't know why I'm such a sad person.
My friends are lovely.
My parents are kind.
I'm good in school;
I'm musically talented.
I am (I think) a likable person.

Still,
some nights I spend crying.
I rip the skin
off my thumbs
until I bleed.
I yell at anyone who tries to talk to me
when they interrupt my
silence.

My heart sinks when I think of
relationships
and how flighty I am;
if I am?

I make up
so much
in my head,
especially
when my anxiety hits.
Do I even have anxiety?
Maybe;
I dunno.
Self-diagnosed
with depression and anxiety.
It's how I cope,
I guess,
with being a sad person.

I've been a broken record,
Since I've been put "on probation."
"I just love him, so much;"
"I just miss him;"
"I just want to be able to talk to him,
But he just . . . can't."

And the worst part is,
you know all this.
You know exactly
what's happening to me.
And that's why you left.
That's why you left me
to be on my own
for a while.
__

I'm accomplishing nothing
saying this.
It's all I've been saying
for the past three
weeks,
and
I just . . .

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Chops"
because that was the name of his dog
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and a gold star
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door
and read it to his aunts
That was the year Father Tracy
took all the kids to the zoo
And he let them sing on the bus
And his little sister was born
with tiny toenails and no hair
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a
Valentine signed with a row of X's
and he had to ask his father what the X's meant
And his father always tucked him in bed at night
And was always there to do it
Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Autumn"
because that was the name of the season
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and asked him to write more clearly
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because of its new paint
And the kids told him
that Father Tracy smoked cigars
And left butts on the pews
And sometimes they would burn holes
That was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames
And the girl around the corner laughed
when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
And the kids told him why
his mother and father kissed a lot
And his father never tucked him in bed at night
And his father got mad
when he cried for him to do it.
Once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Innocence: A Question"
because that was the question about his girl
And that's what it was all about
And his professor gave him an A
and a strange steady look
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because he never showed her
That was the year that Father Tracy died
And he forgot how the end
of the Apostle's Creed went
And he caught his sister
making out on the back porch
And his mother and father never kissed
or even talked
And the girl around the corner
wore too much makeup
That made him cough when he kissed her
but he kissed her anyway
because that was the thing to do
And at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly
That's why on the back of a brown paper bag
he tried another poem
And he called it "Absolutely Nothing"
Because that's what it was really all about
And he gave himself an A
and a slash on each ****** wrist
And he hung it on the bathroom door
because this time he didn't think
he could reach the kitchen.

*--Dr. Earl Reum