Sleepy hands graze across milk moon lakes
Blinking fog away and clear the haze
Stars reflect deep turquoise pools
Tinged violet around the rims
Seeping water trickles
Creating runnels
Meandering through scar tissue
And bruises, warm to the touch
Soreness effervesce
As violence retreats back into its shadowy corner
Waiting to pounce
Pursue its next unsuspecting victims
Tension slides back into itself
In the guise of a false security
And reposefulness
A safe blanket of silence falls over
Snuffing out the light of a burning flame
Darkness pervades, stretching past every last surface
So when another set of eyes peers out
Behind translucent curtains
Alarm fails registration
Of the screams escaping her mouth
And hands covered in blood
Taking what isn’t rightfully theirs

Nails scrape against skin
Collecting dirt under translucent half moons
Tinting shade
Crisp with mint and rust
Corrodes edges
Percolating crevices
Along with bleach white bones
Straw colored hair
Products of peroxide’s touch

Inflated lips puffy
Harboring bodies of deceased
Fragments of skeletons blended smooth
Clean
Stripped of grit
Stripped of love

Plastic eyes glassy
Fixed on light emissions
From tv screens
Cheap magazines
And hours lost on internet
Never to be claimed again

Maybe if I look back far enough
Whip my head into the hands of oblivions
It will snap
Eyes once focused
Sharp as a camera
Now fogged over
Apertures glazed over with misty perplexions
Hazy dreams of aurora
Ghosts of starlight
White splatter paint haphazardly silhouetted against
Void
And recollections of midsummer night
Forever lost to the banks of memory

She sleeps quietly
Beneath opaque mahogany
Life seeped from her veins
No more blood drains away
No more hurt will find her
White sheets glistening with rain
Now crusted over with decay
Eyes set stone, glazing over
Light won’t refract from glassy orbs anymore
Broken machine parts
Carefully placed together
Under boxes better kept hidden
Entombed in earth’s clay
Lips sewn shut
Air can’t escape and float into stories
Like butterflies lightly landing
Then flying away
Her story remains forever embedded into her heart
Along with pink carnations
Scattered petals
And empty shells
Ghosts of machinery’s success

You can’t piece people back together
With masking tape or ace bandages
Because stitches don’t hold
Time unravels faster than your own undoing
By your own hand
Bones lead back to hollow sockets
Lined with flesh
Already starting to decay
It’s not enough to patch up open wounds
Because the deeper ones hide inside
Away from prying eyes
Of people who pretend to care
Some people just don’t hold
Together
Far too broken
Bruised
Abused
Used
Forever scarred
You can’t undo the harm
You can’t erase the hurt
It lingers with you forever
Watching your every move
Until you fall again
Time after time
Coming undone all over again
Until the last time
And you don’t come back

I don’t hold up

I’m tired of drowning in anxiety all the time
Holding me down
Letting me down
Shackles digging in
Rubbing skin raw as it erodes away
You said it was nothing
You call this nothing?
And you shake your head in denial
As if there were no red lines
Etched on my wrists
No scars streaked across
Little white reminders
Of my faults and failures

I wish I could purge myself free
Of this all this negativity
Hanging storm clouds stretch endless
They match the color of my thoughts
When I stare I see little contrails
From a lost airplane
Looking for safety
Looking for land

The night sky
Keeper of darkness
A glowing white moon looms
And a handful of stars scattered like freckles
With no silver lining
Black smoke filling my brain
Distortions at their height
As brainwaves shift their dance
Slow to a halt
There really is no silver lining

Subject my body to a cleanse
From the inside out
Bleach my bones white
And splinters shatter
All around me
They think it’s pretty
I disagree

I wish that I could unlock doors
Shut up tight
Shut out the light
Let beauty transcend
Ascend your biggest fears
I wish I held the key to your heart
I’m not skilled at picking locks
But you are

I wish I could be an angel
Fly high and set free
From endless captivity
Reclaim my innocence
Live life the way it's meant to be
Erase the images from my mind that replay
For hours on end
And your face
All scarred and beautiful
With wisps of hair blowing in the wind like a halo

I wish I could make things right
I don’t wanna have to fight
In a world where civilized is a metaphor
For refined savagery