Make it through make it true
Lay it bare if you dare
Banish doubt make it count
Look around you’ve made it there

Shout it far show your scars
Fill the day with twenty-four hours
This is it what we’ve got
Looks like **** but it’s ours

You see this life filled with strife
So much hurt so much pain
Now you win now you lose
One’s loss another’s gain

It wasn’t meant to be pretty
Empty towns ***** cities
People all around have issues
Insecure, lost and misused

You can choose to stay and fight
Assert yourself claim your rights
Or decide to turn away
Make your mark another day

Showing up is half the battle
Knocked down back in the saddle
It’s not the wins and the losses
It’s the learning it’s a process

At the end of the day
Stop and do the math
Those who've made hay
Don’t have to look back.

Barbed words
arsenic laced
draw blood from the fickle,
cracked and flayed
this brittle heart
cries out as mercy weeps.
Flaws once endearing
bring disgust
as contempt marches in
to dispel the myth we created.
A return to walls,
my worth reflected
within the safety of mirrors
as beauty hides decay
beneath radiant dishonesty.
Solace will not be found within the dawn.
Painted and smiling
I will become the lie you chose.

*listen to the silence of the breaking of my heart

Elizabeth and God exist in a sunflower grave. Her mother and father slit her stomach open and watched the contents pour out like
spaghetti confetti.

Tommy, Elizabeth's boyfriend, rode his ocean blue Huffy, until the tread on his tires grew bald and until the grips were blanketed by dead skin. Looking for her, panoramic views of the horizon leapt beside him. Silhouettes of his legs, churned and kissed the orange and caramel dusk. With every tear in his hamstrings and calves, the **** in his sky grew and swallowed the memory of Elizabeth Mendenhall, Honor Student.

Margot, Elizabeth's twelve year-old sister, was an idealistic soul. Taking a Sharpie, she wrote on her sister's wall, "Liz, there is no death greater than the loss of self, and no life greater than one where we continuously search for what self is." Margot struggled with concentrating and frying eggs - but focused on the sunflower garden, dangerously and perfectly.

Hilary and Brendan were thirty-five and thirty-six years-old. They stabbed their daughter thirty-seven times. They don't know why they did it, they just couldn't think of a reason not to do it.

She begged for her life. The yellow petals of the sunflowers caught blood-drops and, after enough struggle, floated down to kiss and lay on Elizabeth's slow-twitch body. Hilary looked at Brendan and said, "What does this mean?" Brendan shrugged and said, "This is new to me."

The garden was an oven, and digging her grave was like pulling back on a cheap, plastic latch. Elizabeth had pale, pre-cooked pie crust skin. The slits in her stomach looked like peeks into a cherry stuffed filling. Crinkled lips looked indented by a stainless steel fork, back and forth, side to side. And the soil rained upon her like the reversal of hot vapor, returning home.

Elizabeth and the Sunflower Garden.

She is standing on the brink of sanity
looking for something to hold on
She is twenty-six years old, watching a world go by
and wondering whether she belonged

An artist’s child she is, playing with fire;
uncertain if the rug would be pulled from beneath her feet
or if it would just burn in magnificent flames
scratching into her eyes calling forth her tears

She is everyone and no one
She is an idea, a rumor, an imagination
and the last piece of a puzzle that no one tried to solve

She is the pain in pleasure and the pleasure in pain
She is the terrifying beauty of life

She is addiction with a veil of innocence
clinging on to her like a possessive lover

She is curiosity with wide beckoning eyes
She is sin, a devil’s temptation
with delicate grace as enchanting as a lost nymph

She is the woman lying in his bed cocooned in sheets
stained with her blood
with a red so bright that it threatens to claw his eyes out

She is poetry with lyrical verses of wild hair
matted with dirt and blood,
ends curling down the edge of his pillow

She is music with symphonies of chattering teeth
and rustling clothes against smooth ivory skin,
borne of a night as cold as the heart she accused him of bearing

She is forgiveness with serene smiles on lips
as soft as a butterfly’s wings and a small hand outstretched
to clasp his and paint it with red pigments of defeat and strength

She is death with haunting eyes the color of warm honey
that his mum used to feed him
on rainy afternoons he spent curled up in her lap

But he has never been so peaceful
in his entire pathetic existence,
For if death is as exquisite as her
then perhaps death was what he had been searching for all along

-പ്രിയാന്ഷി ദാസ്‌

***** nightmares, words whispered;
Arrows dipped in ego's blood
Shot with bows whittled from
Weeping

Willows.
Waking up, red wine
Eyed,
Mouths

Dry from the opposite of
Kissing,
****, we almost broke up
There, didn't we?

Yes. Now, standing alone before
Mirrors, wiping them clean with hands
Wet from regret, unearthing our
Images and trying to

Find them reflected as in diamonds,
Nickle plated gun metal, or something
Else, like the Mona Lisa's glass case
(And as bullet proof,) but seeing

Only the screen of an
Old, dusty tube TV showing
Re-run specials of the
Itchy and Scratchy Show.

In the woods where light never penetrates
Where only the dark oak grows. Permeating
The air does the barks sap seep unto the
Surrounding never letting lights magnificence
Pierce its veil darkness in this place grows.

Black leaves as dark and rigid as coal, all
That land upon their veins where the light
Of life flourished was drank, Like an
Autumn leaf does this empty husk now
Cursed grey, gently slump greeting the floor.

In this darkened place of soulless sap,
Where leaves are black and veins feast
upon life. A glimmer of light floated
Above the canopy, a single breath of
Sunlight touching the core of a young
Sapling showing it the light banishing
The influence of darkness away.

As the little one grew where blades
Of raven tried to cut it down, shards
Now turned supple and green. Spreading
Life where only darkness loomed, The
Green leaves did reflect light unto the
Dark piercing into this  mournful place.

It was but one in a crowd of many, but
That ray of sunlight every morning widening
Its energies, as grass grew greener in glazed
Darkened place. it was a beacon of life growing
Stronger everyday, and when all the leaves of
Raven black had fed their last, and life was in
Its place then this would be a day when sunlight
Shone banishing the darkness  every single day.