I feel like I'm suffocating in a room full of people but no one can see that I'm dying
and no one knows how to save me and I can't tell them because I've lost the ability to breathe
so I'm left gasping for air that I just can't seem to find
and I'm left struggling to get help that only I can offer

The history of our skin
Remains the same
Because our scars tell
The stories we could
Never tell
But when they heal
I’ll cut all ties to the past
And live in the present

When a spider is scared,
Too scared to run,
To bite,
It draws together.

Knees press inward,
Meeting at a point,
They cover their vulnerability
In an impenetrable wall
Of legs and cuticle.

Tonight, when I close my eyes-
When all I want is the silent,
Empty screen of sleep-
I see the octopedal child
Curled,
Frightened.

I think; "this is me."

I was just guessing.
Kept on turning to the right.
But you're face and my make believe persona of you drove me to the left.
Like a drunk driver behind the wheel, I had no control.
Yet I let you still over come me.
So I found you.
I let you in.
Me, myself have lived on this hell bound planet for 22 years, and still couldn't find happiness.
Past "loves" made these fossil creatures look like peasants kissing the ground their holy queen walked on.
And I was the king.
In other words, you held that throne.
That happiness I was so thirsty for finally quenched me.
You were my absolute everything.
We moved quickly but not with a care.
Blinded though if you may, in a way.
Our family seemed unbreakable cause our contract said forever.
My first true love you were and are.
How *** was always nothing but lust, or what I thought was making love was false.
Till I stepped in you're great door.
Our eyes would lock and no one would ever find the lost key to unlock them.
It wasn't just ******* or sensation.
But making love.
The greatest vice and feeling I would ever encounter.
A year since our fairy tale ending and still I fail to experience that or anything greater, with any woman who has came my way.
From what you weren't aware of was what my previous relationship left me as.
Which was a hidden monster.
So all I knew was how to react off of emotion instead of logic.
Our different ways of life and guiding our own spawns couldn't compromise.
So we started falling apart, like a castle slowly losing it's structured bricks.
Never thought I truly live a real nightmare and knowing there was no waking up.
Reality.
The plane took me away from our departure and still I wait for a new arrival.
From what it looks like it will never happen.
All I am is set for failure and survival.
You know you were my favorite?
I wish I savored it.
Sometimes I wish I could get amnesia so it wouldn't even be memory.
But how can I?
When you was and still are my everything.

How lovely
the gardener thought, planting
the rose and the daisy
next to each other

So they grew
spring to summer - shared
the sun and the rain

The rose kept distance, aware
of the damage her thorns could bring
The daisy kept distance, hiding
her petals love and love-me-not fortunes

Came the autumn with its breeze
the flowers intertwined roots
to keep warm - with no distance
now they struggled to share
the sun and the rain

So an agreement became
the rose basked in the sun
the daisy drank the rain

Came spring, parched or drowned
neither was able to grow again

Sixteen brave years later
I am still getting paint
on the carpet - of course
a different carpet, newer paints
my hands no longer my only paint brush
my hands still not always clean

Twelve tranquil years later
the walls of my bedroom are still
dressed up in paintings and photos -
not all of their subjects
still living

Somewhere in my parents basement is
a box full of kindergarten stories
bubbly letters, chewed crayons, innocence -
somewhere in their basement, but
everything down there is covered in dust

Downstairs my brother
quietly plays the keyboard
its voice dances
through the floorboards
into my bed, where it
pushes me from slumber

An unexpected nap
I wake up with a novel
held to me like a baby, suddenly
remembering how my eyes became
too heavy to finish the chapter -
even accidentally I become exhausted
closing things before I finish them

I have tried asking my anger
to give back my ability
to be open and to love -
she guards them more

she pushes them into
the lacuna that is my heart -
that space that accepts only
my blood and breath
and even still, rhythmically spits them out