when i say i don’t care, i’m lying. congratulations. you broke my heart. i want to feel my pulse again. i want to bite down on her shoulder like warm skin is the last thing i will ever taste. learn to read between the lines. i’m in love with a girl i could never have. we are both too flirtatious with death. when you read my writing, can you see me? i suppose i’m afraid of dying with the faces of people i’ve hurt plastered against every lamppost on my street. missing. if i wasn’t me, i think i would avoid myself at all costs. don’t fall in love with me if you don’t desire immortality. love either does or doesn’t last forever. i’m not sure which hurts more. i’m so full of ****. these metaphors will be the death of me because sometimes i write and it feels like i’m drowning. i’m a shipwreck. if my heart beats any louder you won’t be able to focus on everything i’m trying to say. wrap your knuckles in-between each one of my vertebrae. please break me. i need to feel something again. the ballad of a tortured artist. nothing we haven’t seen before. why should it matter? do i? have i already lost? have you ever looked forward to waking up in the morning just to hear that song again? that’s what being in love with her feels like. i am learning to love my hands most when they’re empty. appreciate my flowers more when they wilt. treat yourself gently. it gets better with time even when you cant wake up in the morning without hitting snooze. like the night he rolled his eyes and told me to go home. i was with him, wasn’t i? will anybody read this? will anybody care? do i even care? i hope nobody tries to follow me because if i had any idea where i was going i like to believe that i’d have been there by now. did you hear me? don’t follow. every 18 months i give birth to new silences with names like paul and ethan and kayla and I Still Haven’t Found You Yet. i can’t keep pretending that i’m not tired of these teeth sitting in my lungs. some things are just impossible to say. how will i survive? the holes in my sheets are all named olivia. i want everything served to me violently, every day lived as a car crash. a punch in the chest. a blatant lie. i’ll swatch your blood on my hand first to see if it complements my skin tone. i haven’t let a man touch me since. i just wanted to help you love your darker parts, i never meant to become one. i am a fossil of a life once lived but not anymore. words don’t cut anymore they just ricochet and i am still so scared by loud noises. i am out of my depth here. if you love me, please tell me.

I will fill a jar with the first bundle of air to fill your lungs
each morning
and call it my own.

a bewildered face, a blurry
cloud in the sky, i’m
turning in circles and every second i see something else collapse.
like the lungs
behind our ribs, we can’t breathe
when the air is so thick.
our bodies shrinking, lungs
suffocating, i don’t think you have room for
me,, anymore.

I wake up when the morning takes its first few breaths and it guides my lungs along,
it says;
breathe, breathe child,
it's true you're in the bottom bulb of the hourglass,
but it's not the sand you're drowning in,
it's your thoughts.

There's popcorn on the ceiling,
a million bajillion clusters that I've spent days trying to count.
In the 1950's these ceilings exploded into popularity.
And until 1977, homeowners blasted asbestos covered popcorn toward the sky, letting mesothelioma fibers fall back to their floor like it was harmless dust.
I take a deep breath, letting the air settle deep in my chest before letting it back out.
My ceiling is probably not made of asbestos.
It's probably styrofoam or some other cheap, paper-based product.
I take another deep breath.
The EPA banned the use of asbestos in these ceilings.
Apparently, inhaled in large quantities, asbestos causes lung disease, lung scarring, and lung cancer.
Another deep, deep breath.
I continue counting the probably not cancer causing popcorn.
I wonder if I would be able to feel the particles swimming in my lungs like fiber glass–thin, delicate, sharp.
I wonder if it would **** me.
I wonder if my family would file a claim like you see on those old commercials screaming,
"If you or a loved one developed mesothelioma you, yes you, could be entitled to compensation."
Or, something like that.
Breathe.
The air tastes funny.
My ceiling is most likely not made of asbestos.
But, I probably wouldn't care if it was.