White as the ticking clock face
You struck me. Violent.
Like running seconds dripping away.
Red fell from your lips
and ate my heart.
The numbers framed your face.
All dark ebony,
Dark and sharp enough to cut.

Numb.
I cannot feel the sunburn on my back.
I cannot feel pain as I glide the blade against my skin.
I no longer feel the spark in my heart.

My head is constantly crowded with nonsense.
All I can see is a little red-headed boy.
He plays with blocks in a sepia-toned room.
I know he is not real.
I have never seen him before, but I know this imagery all too well.
He comes from a photograph from long ago.
He is my reality now.

He lays on the carpet tinted a light green.
He is stacking blocks with different letters on them.
I feel as if I should pay attention to their order.
Is he trying to tell me something?
The letters are blurry, as if I am reading without my glasses.
What could this boy be trying to tell me?
I lean in closer when his image ripples away as if this photograph was dipped into a chemical bath.
Reaching out my hand, I cannot touch him.
I remember he is just a hallucination.
Reality hits me aggressively.

I'm sitting on my bedroom floor, blade in my hand when my phone lights up.
Grabbing my phone, I let the blade fall.
I can feel my heart pound for the first time in months.
I am hoping to hear from a friend.
Instead, a game is inviting me to come back and play.
I know it now.

I am alone.

I am alone with my thoughts and with this boy who isn't real.
I crave human interaction.
I look at the blade on the floor.
I look at my skin tinted red.
I crave being in the same sepia photograph as that boy.
I wouldn't be alone.
I wouldn't be red.
But I only know one way to travel back to him.
I pick up the blade once more and press it hard into my skin.

Numb.
I cannot feel the sunburn on my back.
I cannot feel pain as I glide the blade against my skin.
I no longer feel the spark in my heart.

I cannot stand to be alone anymore.

My hands tremble
Im feeling weak
The blade cuts deeper
The blood starts to seep

I hear the voices
In side my brain

Echoing all around
They are what caused the pain

My hands tremble
I pull the gun to my head
It’s almost over
Just remember what they said

I hear the voices
All around
Crying and weeping
Because my blood is on the ground

It’s all over
No pain to be found
No voices here
No-one around

The familiar images of a girl with strength
and a guy with heart
and feelings that can be reasoned.
I found them everywhere in stories
but not in life.
Mostly they were just weak people
who learnt how to live with their heart.
And loved and let themselves be loved
with the faults that they had.
Here
people who were – what they were.
No love or devotion
promising to change them into lovable beings.
Especially when ‘lovable’ was defined
by people who didn’t approve certain lives
and certain love.
And the perfect image of love
and notion of the perfect people who deserved it
made me think of the emotions we cut from our heart.
Leaving us little more empty,
taking us a little more far
from the perfect life that we were told to have.