You've been known to reside inside the pockets of our local ******,
more often in my mother's bedside draw.
You were my childhood kiss,
a silhouette of senses dancing on the street;
adolescently sweet.
You were his means to an end,
a partial paralysis of collapsed arteries,
swore only to be a friend.

"Step a little closer,
come take a clearer view."

But those to make it out alive are few.
You said you'd take away the pain,
you became the blood inside our veins.
I watched him rot straight down to the bone,
his agony poured out in moans.

"The shakes, the sweats, how can't you see?
They're all gifts from me."

They always warned us of your games,
I should have known it could only end in shame.
But you were here to stay,
and oh,
how we played.

I'm always spilling your
name on strangers tables,
and it's like watching
bottles break beneath
my feet.
Somehow I think
it will give me validation
for the razor blades
inside my throat.
Or explain why
I never close that *******
window
when I conjure up
the pulse
to take a shower.
But then I recall,
while cursing your name
through shattering teeth,
that it reminds me
of the way you dug
your fingers
in my chest,
and pretended to be blind
when you saw blood
across the sheets.

Sometimes
when I'm driving home
from school,
I'll see your face
inbetween the trees
but this version of you
is just a smudge
of passing scenery
leaving as fast
as I remember.

I'll see you in the simple things.
Ile six
in the grocery store
across the street,
between the pages
of the books I read,
in the laugh
of my chemistry teacher
when the boy
who sits behind me
tells a ***** joke.

I see you in the things I can't escape.

I feel you
crawling on
my skin
in early hours
of the morning
and I keep trying to scratch you out
but the wounds are getting worse
and my mother won't stop asking

And for so long
I thought you were
the one that
consumed me
but here I stand
with your taste
still on my tongue.