Picking at my own skin
But of course I can't win
I can't peel away the parts of me
When it's not a reality I’m seeing.
My own deception
The rules that fabricate
Personal rejection
Like I don’t want to love this face.
In my imagination
Joy can exist
Until the outside looks in
Like an evaporating mist
My peace begins to twist
And suddenly I’m judging
Every inch around my wrist.
I could break my own rules
I could force myself in tense recovery
But I fear that healing
Won't feel as good as peeling
Away at what could be okay.
I'm in love with the grip
I romanticize my crypt
Even while I’m wasting away
There's no more blood left to lay
At my own altar
I pray
But I’m wasting away

sometimes it's good to rattle our own cages
and sometimes our cages get rattled
either way
we won't be tamed,
we refuse to be mundane,
idleness is not our game, for
we have fire in our veins

& we don't have to be the same

if a boy
writes a love song
about you,
will his lyrics
exist outside of
their melody
& resolve
in reality
too?

how can i feel
every painful feeling
at one single second
and fail to implode?
please make me a star
that can cave in
on itself and take
all that once was matter
-all that once mattered-
and fade it within
to only nothing.
please make me a black hole
of everything i used to be
because the absence
of my light,
a lifetime of night,
sounds better than
to keep shining.

the sun
is flaring up again
stretching her rays in
solar storms
along her skin
I hope she knows
how bright she shines
but I see the explosions
in her eyes
she's afraid to be another star
in one of countless galaxies
so she makes herself bright
to stand out in the night
a twinkling anxiety

dear sun
be careful with your fire
and remember you're desired
your light gleams in the blackout
your warmth is felt throughout
you don't have to sparkle harder
you don't have to
burn yourself out

I feel my mediums
are more numbered than the stars
poetry is my venus
and performing is my mars
in the same solar system,
arts suspended in space
they glow, luminesce,
their light illuminates my face,
my soul, my heart, my words
in motion
like orbiting planets
in an empty, endless ocean

but I am like a passing comet
souring in the universe's pocket
I do not spend eternity
in any single gravity,
instead I shine by
many lights:
every art along my flight

well, I'm back here again
doubting the very map of my skin
searching for the broken terrain
that you see so clearly within

i know i have valleys and mountains
the same as other lovers
but my heart quakes and tears
when you hate what you discover

i can feel the splitting of the fault
as rejection grinds my love to halt
ripping through my muscled earth
to leave a gaping chasm of hurt

the darkness consumes
where once sunshine flushed
my map transformed
the landscape torn
by my own fixation
on human touch

i try to redesign
to alter my flawed countryside
to mend the gap
that utterly attacked
the regions
of my heart and mind

but my map cannot be
defined by your words
your approval or attention
my topography must be my own
from every land to every ocean

for the sun does not truly fade
when scratches appear on my surface
and i will bear my design with
pride
because every detail,
every river,
every stone,
every piece that makes this
heart my home,
has a beautiful
and unbreakable  
purpose