The Enemy comes to
Steal, ****, and destroy
But before he plunges you
Down to the dark abyss,
Your ultimate defeat
He will cause you to, to, too, toooooooooo

----------f l a t l i n e----------

He will set a feast of lies before you where
Every sweet, delectable crumb
Is poison that will
Numb
You from your head down to your toes

The poison won't
Make your ears deaf
Or your eyes blind
It will seep in deeper in your system
And cause your brain to harden
And your heart to grow cold

It will inflict hallucinations
And bring your conclusions to distortions.
To hunger, poverty, you will say
"That happens everyday"
Injustice, greed
"Everyone does it anyway"
Pain, sorrow
"That is normal, usual"
"All is just the way it should be"
"Everything is ok"

So now you will fade to
Inaction, stagnation
And your life will end
Into mere existence
And so now you will drift
And roam
This aching, weeping world
That you've tolerated
in a

----------f l a t l i n e----------

i am so
like a
fistful of
rice dropped
on the hard
wood floors
you could
never gather
all of me, even
find pieces next
year.

in the morning
we struggle with the bed sheets that
wrap us, bind us

in the afternoon
we crawl to our desks
and burn our faces
with radiation
from our phones, from our laptops
reasoning, pleading, typing, and clicking
away the words and sentences
that could decide our fates

in the evening
the voices sharing laughter and stories are
nowhere
to be found in the dinner table
there is only the hurried clanging
of forks and knives against porcelain
we swallow several morsels of reheated leftovers
and just drown our stomachs with coffee and pills
the breath of our sighs fill the air
and bring us to suffocation

we drag our limbs
to wherever
the answers and solutions may be
with all our might,
we anchor ourselves against the world's spin

our sunken weary eyes
glance at each other from time to time
no words are spoken
but from those fleeting moments
we know the burdens that the other carries
as much as our hearts ache to
we can't help each other
because we're already too lost helping ourselves

I remember the day I met you with such clarity. You remembered me, I didn't recall meeting you before. But you caught my eye, and there was something about you that made my heart skip a beat. Weeks turned into months, with little to no communication. But I couldn't get you out of my head or my heart. So I prayed. Prayed I would cross your mind. And I will never forget that Sunday night at three in the morning. You reached out to me out of nowhere, and we stayed up talking till four-thirty.

As the leaves began to change so did our friendship. Facebook messages turned into text messages, visiting you at work, studying at coffee shops, and late night conversations became a regular thing. And just like the leaves fall for winter, so I fell for you. But that was my mistake. Because, like the fool I am, I believed you would catch me. And you didn't. You invited me to take the risk, or as some would say: "you lead me on." And I fell hard. Hitting rock bottom and breaking into a million tiny pieces. You watched me fall-oblivious to the power you had over me.

Its one thing, to experience heartbreak from someone that was yours. Its another thing, though, to lose someone you never had. You was never mine to lose. The hardest I ever did, was forcing myself to walk away from you. Everyone told me I deserved better. It took four months to believe them.

Now, I'm sitting at the coffee shop we used to go to, alone, watching the sleet hit the ground on this cold december day. I deleted our messages, and we are no longer Facebook friends- and I hope you know that was not easy for me. Because I miss you and our laughs and 3AM conversations. But I also know that this is what I need to move forward, to heal. I'm not saying goodbye forever but for now. And I pray that someday we can be friends again.

This is not how I planned the story of us ending. But someone recently told me the best way to make God laugh is by having a plan. No more planning. No more trying to understand why things happened the way they did. Because I'm not meant to understand-I'm meant to trust that God will turn my disintegrated ashes into something beautiful and radiant. And he will. Someday, I will find someone who treats me the way I deserve.
Someday, things will be beautiful again.
Someday, my story won't end in tragedy.