Funny how we woke up in the morning
and pretended that tomorrow never happened—
strutted naked in mirrors celebrating our youth,
laughing, knowing suns and moons couldn’t do the same.

We borrowed our arms from the fridge
and peddled bicycles with bad breath—
trading war stories ‘cause we knew
if we came back alive
life would still be the death of us.

I don't know
where we were headed,
but the sidewalk did,
and its smells had been
liberated by a hot summer rinse.

You grabbed at my pendulum
arm, and ******
me back before
the gap grew us
out of being a couple.

My penance was
a hair-shirt stare
and a smack with that saw:
"Life's about the journey,
not the destination."

"Sure," I said, "but the end's
a ****** cul-de-sac.
I wanna see what I can
before we smash
against it."

You summed me up,
mouthing the three letters
you drew on my chest,
still not-chastened:
"A-D-D, Humming bird."

"There's no deficit
of attention here, Old Crow.
It's just this
plugged-up world's got
a surplus of stimuli."

It was one week
later you left,
taking a whole
slew of savory inputs
to the blank without you.

"Everything
happens for a reason,"
you'd tell me.
Knowing the cause,
never changes my effects.

dirt* is only dirt
if you know it is dirt-

silence
is only
silence
if you say it is silent
(and violence
is only violence
if you feel it is violent).

where is my
human being?
was i not promised one from the start?
oh lonely, oh patient little heart.
have you not another
human being?
where have they all gone?
oh lonely, oh patient little song.
i, too, am a
human being
but sometimes, when it rains,
and when the world is rough
and strange, just one
human being
is nowhere
near enough.

The first time I skipped a meal, I spent the night with a gnawing pain in the pit of my stomach.
The first time I cut myself, I threw up at the sight of my own blood.
The first time I made myself sick, I cried.

The first time is always the hardest, but it only gets easier after that.

Years down the road now,
I can see the beauty in what I've done.
The breath-taking wonder found in decay.

Tonight I sit on the pavement
outside my apartment.
My fingers curl around the
rusted chain-link fence.
Sharp edges of broken wire
left cuts not nearly deep enough
on my arms when I squeezed
through the hole next to me.

I don't live anymore than the metal at my back.
Just like the fence I am merely existing.

Months from now,
my kidneys will run
the risk of failing.

Already my teeth are
stained and eroded from
stomach acid.

My bones knock against
one another from shivering,
and the pavement underneatth
me chews at my tailbone.

When someone asks for a picture of me,
I give them the grainy photograph of the hole in the fence.
Just like it I am rusting. Breaking down piece by piece.

There is beauty in dying. In the natural course of slow decay.

When doctors ask me
why I did this to myself,
I will show them the scars
on my stomach.
I'll show them my
barren womb and
protruding rib bones.

I'll tell them that in trying to be perfect, I found what we're all really looking for.

I discovered that we're
born to die, and that
the beauty of life is
our slow descent into
the darkness of death.