Maybe this time will turn out different
Running from my worst fears
All my past experiences
Problems housed between ears

I am just tired of this ****** life
Had enough of fake concern
Just cold to every watching eye
Shadow haunts everywhere I turn

I feel like darkness is chasing me
Following roads I chose to take
Burned in fire are charred footprints clear to see
Waiting for repurcussions of each mistake

How can I change the outcome?
Fear slicing right through each nerve
I yearn for happier days to come
Same love that I deserve

The hurt is supposed to decrease
Feel worse each passing week
Afraid to search for a silver lining
Rarely find and it's thin and weak

I still harbor foolish hope
Patterns not too deeply ingrained to reset
Tried erasing pain to cope
Some thoughts I can't forget

I know I need to let imperfections go
Falling headfirst into pools of sticky remorse
Love a shield to keep me dry
But there's too many puddles on my course

It seems too familiar somehow
Didn't choose a different enough route
Now old routines return with vengance
Resentment weaving it's way throughout

Scars serve as a reminder
To turn the **** around
I smile like their screaming is a dare
It's "what if?" that has me bound

A question that keeps haunting
I love to predict the best
Perhaps it's time to face the facts
This try will end like the rest

I tasted a lingering shot of ****** *****
on my tongue
before my mouth tasted
the rest of the night.
I pretended that I was
much drunker than I was
because I thought that would
make it easier,
less painful.
I gave myself a pep talk
and should've understood
that nothing wanted
needs convincing.
I've suppressed the act so much
in my subconscious
that I only remember it in flashes,
like a slow motion replay of a life-ending
car accident you'd see in a movie.
In some ways,
that scened ended me;
the world was fuzzier
than it had been the night before,
when I woke up no longer wearing
my agency.
The normalcy with which I picked myself up
from the dingy navy couch
was underwhelming
and haunting all at once.
I left with my dress and my shame clinging to me,
fearing not for myself
or how I had said no so many times before,
but instead that
giving it all still wasn't enough for you;
losing myself,
unraveling my soul wasn't worth
what I thought it would sell for.
All I saw was
the satisfaction that I had given that didn't satisfy you.

An emptied shell;
you took it all,
and I've been hollow ever since.

sometimes, it's the songs without words, the ones that slip silently beneath the undercurrent, that will seek you out,

that will sing you the terrible story of crows to mend your heart, that will whisper what no one will tell you because it's your soul manifest, it's your heart reaching out --

they open themselves slowly, but you have to be careful with them; you have to look

at them from afar, and bow, and maybe then, she will open her mouth to you, where not words but wisteria lie, where not passion but pain rest, where everything raw and immaterial pours out in the haze and panic of devolution in the chaos of the earth and skies and all that suffers in between where in the center of the swirling mass amidst the high cries of sorrow and love will be her

and just,

   her ,

some songs will move you, shift the light through you, shift the pedestal of surety and blow it right away.

some songs will obliterate you, but most will hold you.

and when they'll release you, you will fall, and it will be so glorious and so terrifying that you will become a god in the storm and you will know, truly know, then, what it is like to be immortal, to be unhurt and untouched, unmoored and unbridled, impossible against the possibilities of a mortal existence.

you will deify.

In every hello,
Every coffee date,
Every awkward new hug
Or handshake,
I search
For your autumnal smile,
Your thick accent,
A familiar embrace—

And then the haunting  
Fear
Rushes in;
I remember
Exactly
Why you’re a ghost
And not a lover.

I close my eyes
And yearn to forget you,
Let your spectre
Burn
To ash