There are so many words, so many pent up sentences biting in my mind. Some are hurtful, others heartfelt, ones that slip out under the tongue, and those that are far more patient, festering. Excess secrets, a true abundance of dead emotions. And what am I to do? Weave the quiet hate and the screaming loneliness into words of gold no one will ever read. Papers in the hearth. Literary drawings hidden on sheaves of paper in the binding of books, and hidden in the margins. I find them.

And I burn them.

Those fragile, pre-shattered shards of my sanity strewn through my post-shattered being. Those hushed whispering shadow words. Inked in black, with blacker intent. But they make the fire beautiful. They make it glow with life as I burn bits of myself. Burn them away with  malice and fear and cowardice. And the fire dances with joy I can only feel imprinted on my dulled mirror of a soul. But it distorts and snaps. Snaps into shards with the blackest intent.

I fear I have more words to burn.

Silence is the new décor
of our home.
Empty chairs with broken bones.

Fading colors of dreams
now accent the
brokenhearted theme.

Windows once holding a
picturesque view are now
shaded with dingy colored hues.

A man and a woman walk
in polar directions
no long aware of their imperfections.

Silent are the voices
that used to sing love songs.
When did this marriage go wrong?

Softly she cries at their
bedroom door as she whispers,
"I don't love you anymore."

my barricade has become a prison
4 walls that shrink every day and slowly cut off my oxygen
they worked too well i sing to them in a melancholy tone
more often heard in the mouths of whales
there's a sea of bones and they’re pricking at stray scraps
look out there, past where the sky meets the earth
if you look hard enough you’ll see it
cold and empty and sloshing it calls to me now
“leave me now” i say to the space beside me
before you go pre-heat the oven to 950
i need a warm place to rest and that sounds about right
skeletal hands grip around my expanding skin and pull me down
tight tight tight they sew me a corset of my own rough skin
teeth flood my throat and scratch at my collarbone
self-inflicted sorrow
heart disease in a can
barreling through my system, how much longer do i got, doc? 
my bones are unknitting and my brain is unraveling
pink tendrils sinking to the bottom of my skull, goodbye little ones, i never did use that much anyways
my skin peels beneath my fingers and my light won't turn out
5 am and i'm a halfway alcoholic all i need is the *****
my capillaries have frozen and i'm an ice rink now
sliced and diced and punched into shape
ready to ride over 
no words left no line gaps no punctuation 
who has time for that when they're doing nothing?
i haven't eaten in a week
and i'm still spewing everywhere
pressure points and muscle strands oozing against my frame
i can feel all my ribs beneath my hands
and the jelly will vaporize and i’ll just soften
maybe if i push hard enough the skin around them will shatter and i’ll collapse inward

well now
it appears that i’ve undone myself

Serrations of chimneys
Stone-black perforate
Velvet-black dark.
A tree coils in core of darkness.
My swinging
Hands
Incise the night.
A man slips into a doorway,
Black hole in blackness, and drowns there.
A second man passing traces
The diagram of his steps
On invisible pavement. Rain
Draws black parallel threads
Through the hollow of air.