what kind of person fantasizes about being sicker than they already are?
man, it's time I realize life is worth it and I've made it this far
when I can't forget, can't forgive, and get stuck
tires spinning, thoughts running, strength thinning
out of control
what role does my faith play in feeling whole?
I wish I could erase this hole eating away inside
but then I might just feel more empty
I try to cut through the feelings by cutting through the skin that covers this lifeless body
the razor shreds my flesh instead of fleshing out all of the chaos inside this mess of a mind

You told me you didn’t want us to have any words left unsaid that night, so I told you everything, but over-thinkers like us can never really leave a conversation with everything on the table.
I didn’t tell you thank you, thank you for making me want to be the best version of myself, and for making me feel butterflies I thought were dead forever.
I’ve had to keep my mind busy, for when it stops I always find my thoughts displaying our memories like art in a museum, I keep racing to the door, but it’s locked and I can’t escape, I feel trapped in a nightmare I can’t wake up from.
If you’re reading this I have only one more thing to say, it doesn’t come with subtext or any expectations, I just want to say I miss you.

In the commotion,

police officers salute --


in all directions.

Textbooks in a heap,

the pages held together --


by dog-ears only.

desire and fear
passion and abomination
intertwined -- such is the chaos
smothering my mind

the throes of terror
and sickly melancholy
torment me...

haunting and creeping
the only reality
in this stillness

I am a goodness without its wings
I am evil without its fangs

To myself
I'm an enigma

there’s a living reality of
fallibly hopeful distraction—
sheltered squatters—
residing above a room where
everything important is angry,
not easily suffocated.
the warm polyester of a busy mind
is sick with monotonous fear
that the residents below
will expand their decay,
raging in a panic until the walls collapse
and the nails in the floorboards are
upturned and weaponized;
a clever, persistent enemy.
this unbearably,
infallibly hopeless
struggle.
there are paintings on the walls
and books on the shelf,
plants on the windowsill in the late afternoon.
i’m worried these will die too.

I am HAPPY -
Through chaos betwixt upon me;

Rain shall fall - and;
Flowers may wilt - from;
Fields damasked in blood,
As tears of my toil.

Debt knocking upon my door,
Whispers haunting my floor;

Terrors hail from the sky,
Loneliness hung to dry;

But I am Happy,
Prithee, can't you see?

my hands tremble on paper,
the sharp pencil crisply glides,
across sheets spread out on the table.
my feelings are laid bare,
dispossessed of the weapons.
history is written in the past.
so why am i worried about the future?
ink laid bare across battlefields of corpses.
these documents have split apart lives,
memories and hopes.
i bury all hopes of being happy in this world.
because what i want must not be confused with what i must feel.
so i hide behind these words,
writing thousands of pages, scrolling past ages and ages of sacrifice.
to only end up
saying nothing at all.
d
  o
     n
         o
            t
          h
       i
    d
e

it all goes dark
when the shroud of the night
covers the earth: darkness, no light
as all the others close their eyes
their minds shut down, the air goes quiet

but the blinding fluorescence in my room
outshines the window, I see no moon
it only reflects me, my room: chaos and doom
the voices scream louder as I try to give up too soon

nightly divinity calls to me - soft - siren - lullabies - to sleep
but the eyelids, trapped open, within them my eyes weep
with each passing breath, the screeching voices cut deep -

my cheeks grow wetter while the stars glow dimmer
those dead eyes close, right before the sun's first shimmer.