I see your bare collar bone.
The chassis of you.
Your shoulders stiff
from lifting too long.
Your ribs—tight—
holding in breath
to call out life.

I'm going to take you home.
It’s okay. No one will see.
We’ll hide it with a necktie,
drape it in my sleeves.
I’ll walk you there
with my ****** ache
and shoes worn thin
from leaving places too fast.

We should hurry.
My wrists are tired.
They shake from the inside.
My marrow is dusted with fear.
Osteoporosis, they said—
but it’s just a word
for how I’ve been crumbling
before anyone noticed.

I wanted to carry you.
But my bones—
they fold under me.
I have enough ache
just holding myself.
Still,
I want to take you home.
I will strip myself bare
beneath the sun if I must,
but I cannot let you
see my bones.

Stories nestled in my bones
are not silent storms.
My heart is haunted
by their primordial groans.
Yet so many scattered thoughts
go unknown.
Like the frantic way
autumn leaves are blown.
What decays becomes wisdom
for another day.
Skeletal stories now, the flesh of us
is gone.
Even though we loved from the core
of our jagged bones.
Human life seems just an agonized attempt
to be heard.

I built this house
Of glass with stone
I watch you break it with my bones

You ran a blitzkrieg on my heart,
Invading like the Mongol's carte,
Menu of skulls and bones.

After your attack,
You settled down,
Sweeping up the bruise and blood.

Then you just left,
What? I thought you wanted this nation?
I guess not.

It spreads through her like the cancer in her bones.
It takes her strength, but supports her weakness.
She tries to **** it with therapies and medicine,
but it grew back stronger every time. It is her.
A part of her she couldn’t cut out or off.
It is killing her and hurting those around her.

Depression is like breaking your arm.
Once you know it’s happened,
So many skills are set back to zero
Reaching into the sky and wanting
Are both hindered skills once maintained

You know what it is like you’ve done it before
But now you can’t make the mussels remember
Because you forgot how to want
Your limbs don’t remember how to stretch
And neither does your mind

One step up
Reach to the left
One hand after the other
Grip. Slip. Crunch.
On the ground,

Stretch and pull
Out of a right angle
Heat and ice
Hang in distortion
Pressing into a straight line

Bones rearranged
Cracked and torn
Bent out of form
Numbing pain zings
Restriction in movement

Melt into blank stares
Therapy, therapy, repeat!
Doctor calls and late-night sprawls
Shape a new reality.
Bending into strength

healed scars litter my trashed body. my skin a mural, a testament, to my battles. i used to do it to punish. now i do it to feel something, anything.

oh to continue to cut
deeper and deeper
until i am no longer human.
but bones.

humans are no more than their secrets.
cutting into them reveals how disgusting or beautiful they truly are

i am a horrible person

Are the bones in your
closet so itchy?
So itchy you need relief?
Do you need a relief from them?

Come on and let them out,
they need fresh air.
They can’t survive forever
with stale air in the closet.

Does it make you happy
to constantly buy more
bones, to add to the irritation?
Is it your joyfulness condensed?

Maybe they’re something that
you like to show off all the time.
You think the only currency is
in the unnerve you receive from others.

We cut one another
Down to the very flesh
While we miss each other
Deep inside our bones

Isn’t that ironic?