Every time the butterflies come,
they crawl up my throat and start to choke me
but it's a good kind of choking,
like scratching an inch even though it makes the rash burn
or liking the pain of dotted blood lines on my skin
after a long day of holding in monsoons and earthquakes
beneath calm serenity.

Or like telling myself I can never get better
even if a part of me knows, knows I can.
It’s like deciding never to speak again,
or stop eating just because you can.

And why is it that pain tastes so much like love
when I willingly dress myself in it,
yet someone lays a finger on me
and I feel the same way
when my friends are mistreated
and animals are abused,
I feel a surge of fierce hatred
throughout my whole body
and don’t you ******* touch me
ever again.

I believe the world can be better than this.
And what does that say about me?
Does it make me a hypocrite in a sort of vague way?
Because I keep wondering
if I do things without thinking
that another me would hate me for.

I see shapes in your sunken eyes,
pressing like last night's lifeline,
telling you to keep your heart safe,
but I have to look away.

Please don't cry,
I can't possibly turn tears to gold.
I'm not the type to indicate
what should fill these empty spaces
and I don't know what to say
when you don't say it first.

When the shivering starts you'll see,
I can't be your blankets and late-night radio,
or anything you used to believe.
When those eyes mean oceans in mine,
you'll see how nothing I can be.

Is that still you?
I remember days of not breathing
at the thought of your last breath,
of loose words
and using them to carefully twist
a heartstring hammock.

I can't see past the red in your eyes now,
the spots on your face like footprints, track marks,
soft and tired,
hard like needles.
They stripe your skin as if for an ancient battle,
for a war that soaks your empty spaces in kerosene
and scrapes the match off your wrist.

So while these butterflies pull my stomach
out my mouth, to the floor,
and your feet shuffle from the bombs erupting
down to your toes...
I can't bear the thought of a cloudless conscious,
of reality too close to the glass.
The thought that I can't save you from this,
because all I want
is to burn down with you.

The old
think the young
can't know anything
of importance
at their age.

The young
think the old
have forgotten
how to feel
anything
at their age.

What a waste
of knowing
and feeling.

Every age
has it's own
wisdom, feeling,
passion.

How to cross
that rope?
   ~mce

I have always
wondered
why so many
women
have such
horrible
taste
in men.

Ladies?

What's it like to live?

I've been dead for so long,
I've completely forgotten the sensation.