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b e mccomb Aug 2016
The bench is three paces
From the bike rack
Twelve feet
To the light pole
A million miles from
Where I want to be
And eleven minutes
Closer to you.

He's circling around
The L-shaped
Concrete garden
And she's singing where
The sidewalk
Meets the asphalt
While I'm somewhere
In between them.

If this campus were
A battleground
Every one of us
Would be losing
And the shuttle bus
Would only serve to
Carry away our
Stone cold bodies.

We're all waiting
At some earthy spring
Bus stop
For the same ride
A bittersweet
Kiss of death.

Now I see a car
Coming up the hill
And I get to my feet
After all
I shouldn't keep the
Hearse waiting.
Copyright 4/7/16 by B. E. McComb
b e mccomb Aug 2016
nothing has changed
in years
at least not when i look
out the window and see
the same sunsets
i've been seeing every
night when i don't want
to be inside.

there are people
who were born looking
like poetry
pink toenails
swaying to some
soft song.

there are people
who were born looking
like music
hair flowing
feet dancing to some
wild jig.

there are people
who were born looking
like a painting
their skin
harmonizing to every
untamed color.

and then there are people
who were born looking
like trees
standing straight and tall
unbending
in the wind.

looking like trees
and feeling like
tumbleweeds
born to love and
leave before the
desert storm.

blowing their way
through life.

people looking like trees
and feeling like
tumbleweeds
tumbleweeds like me.

my cracked
toenails growing down
into the floor and twisting
for something to hold onto
my hair growing upwards
through the roof and
towards the late
afternoon sun
and my skin slowly separating
into layers of bark.

every
fiber
screaming
run.

a tumbleweed
born and formed
into a tree
no longer a sapling
too late to leave
too early to die.

go home all of you
and i'll be happy
alone in the dark
the only place where a
tree can truly be
a tumbleweed.
Copyright 4/1/16 by B. E. McComb
b e mccomb Aug 2016
i'm feeling empty
inside
like someone took an
ice cream scoop
and hollowed out my
stomach more easily than
sawing open and
gutting out a cantaloupe.

there's nothing in there
nothing where the seat
of my emotions
used to be
because when i'm alone
even the anger
dulls to the stab of a poorly
sharpened knife.

i've stood in the hot
white kitchen with the tall
metal countertops
some stiff sort of summer
breeze fluttering the
ineffective flypaper
stringing the low ceilings
and watched you
precisely section off a
watermelon.

but now i'm the one on that
hackneyed cutting board
and you don't even notice the
juice streaming to the edge.

my overactive mind
used to be a razor
slicing quickly
almost painlessly
but now it's just a dull
serrated edge scraping
along my slowly
ripping skin.

everyone sitting at
the dinner table
passing me around and
laughing as they sink
their forks into me
and you always wondered
why i avoided family
meals at all costs.

i'm being
eaten alive
like fruit
in the summer
and your only
concern is how
many slices you'll
get out of me
and whether or not
i was sweet enough.
Copyright 4/1/16 by B. E. McComb
b e mccomb Aug 2016
there is a
downside
to recovery

and that is
that you can get
so exceptionally
good at talking
yourself down that a
couple years later you
forget to question why
you're still feeling the same way.

being clean
doesn't necessarily mean
being okay.
Copyright 3/30/16 by B. E. McComb
b e mccomb Aug 2016
i can only promise you
one thing

and that is that someday
there will come a moment
where i
snap.

they always told me that
depression was
anger turned inward
which i understand

but this body of mine can only
hold so much

and i can promise you
there will come a day
when i just
snap.

i'm already
cracking

and i can feel all the
anger inside
trickling out
through the
hairline fractures
in my emotions.

i can only promise you
this one thing

i don't know what will
happen
but i'm afraid for when
it does

because i remember two
moments in my past
very clearly
burned into some
heavily scarred portion
of my memories.

i remember when there was
a board somewhere
behind his door
behind his eyes
and i remember when there was
a hole where my
doorknob used to be
heart used to be.

and both times
i remember
screams
threats
and tears
i cried
and panic
cold
dark
panic set in.

he was screaming
through the door
and i can still
hear it.

i know
like i
couldn't
help it
he couldn't
help it
he just
snapped.

if i dig somewhere
below the
headache
i can still hear him.

he swore
i remember he swore
and screaming
is not a big enough word
to accurately describe
his voice
and the way the rage and
hatred still transcends
all time and space
gaps between the facts.

i can only wonder
if there was anyone
in the basement
or across the driveway
who heard how
he was going to
**** his family
**** himself.

and i wonder if anyone
ever knew
how my entire world
seized
and the teetering stability
so crucial
that i acquire
fell.

to this day
i don't know why.

all i know when we talked on the phone
he said "there are some scary people here"
and i couldn't understand
how he could be
a scary person by night
and my brother by day.

years later i stood in a hallway
next to some locked doors
and i could hear a ping-pong game on
the other side.

they told me that it was the
adult ward.

and i thought about the scary people
and then i thought about me
in the adolescent ward
and wondered if i had become
a scary person too
but i still don't know.

i don't remember that
he came to see me
but i remember that
she said
he was
upset.

one day my other
brother told me that he
had had four suicide
attempts.

but all i remember seeing was
the two a.m. kitchen
conversations about
God
perpetual blue lights
from the crack under
his bedroom door
until the sunrise
and nights where he never
came home.

there were three doors
down that hallway
one had a barricade
one had up all nights
and one had a hole
where the doorknob used to be.

we're in different hallways now
ones where the doors aren't
all in order
but i can still hear the echos
and feel the separation
pulling us apart
over meals that i would rather
eat alone
and weekend car rides spent
with headphones in.

and the walls have been painted
but i can still see every word
written in invisible ink
around each window frame

the story of a family
that slowly snapped.
Copyright 3/20/16 by B. E. McComb
b e mccomb Aug 2016
i would love
to leave the house.

walk downtown
in broad daylight
find a cute coffee shop
to haunt

(with my notebooks i'd never
notice any lack of internet connection)


stroll along the moonlit
shore
dip my toes in the water
off the dock

(the only thing i'll take
advice from is a lake)


read books
all afternoon
in the stilted quiet
of the public library

(perhaps pay off my longstanding
fine like a responsible adult)


go shopping for a
brand new skirt
worn once or twice
by someone else

(and i swear i would dance
in the rain until it was soaked)


find some kind of local
museum that nobody really
cares about and go look at
something antiquated

(or i suppose i could just stay
in the secondhand shop attic)


go into a music store and
play all my worst melodies
on their guitars and ukuleles
until they kicked me out

(the discomfort on the other patron's
faces would be worth the humiliation)


oh yes
i would love
to leave the house
and i would love
to do it
alone.
Copyright 3/18/16 by B. E. McComb
b e mccomb Aug 2016
every raindrop on the
car windshield turns into
an ocean

and with my luck i
could be struck by lightning
and survive.

perhaps the electrical impulses
could cosmically and
inexplicably change me

send life back into my tired
neurons and set a cold fire
deep in my bones.

so i'll stay
in this parking lot

and i'll
wait

for the blue
flash of fallout

watching the shadows of
rain run down my
own glassy skin.

it's march again
and i know what i should
be listening to

the damp spring
suddenly coming up
on traffic islands

i should be
absolutely
thunderstruck

flying through the air
head buried deep
in the wispy clouds

but i'm finding myself
lightningstruck
in place

feet on the ground
drowning in
pavement.
Copyright 3/17/16 by B. E. McComb
b e mccomb Aug 2016
mauve dress pants
i would wear
mauve dress pants
in this subtle jubilation of
springish behaviors
if everyone i never
knew didn't happen
to be wearing them.

the ice cream stand
is open again
and i'm letting the
peppermint
snorkel its way up my
nasal passages
smooth away my
coral cavities.

when the weather gets
this warm
i end up spending too
much time staring at the
ceiling and tuning out
the sunshine calling.

and i wonder
if i lined the rafters
with millions of cotton *****
would they absorb the sound
of all the words spoken
that nobody ever
bothered
to listen to?

the scratchy texture of
hairspray
is holding me in place
anticipating the
rise and fall of each
easter hymn.

glue me down
for one more round.
Copyright 3/17/16 by B. E. McComb
b e mccomb Aug 2016
i swear these
drum beats
are the only thing
keeping my heart going

and i would run
through the rain tonight
if i thought the cars that go
around the corners too fast
really would never see
a thing

apathy
my friends
is a dangerous game
that i was never
made to play
but i was given
too sharp a lot in life
to avoid it completely

call me a terrible liar
but if you think i'm so
bad at hiding the truth
i guess you'd never know
if i suddenly
got good at it

if i thought it would
do me any good
i would jump out
the window and run

but it wouldn't do any
good when i keep finding
myself too tired to even
turn off the lights.
Copyright 3/13/16 by B. E. McComb
b e mccomb Aug 2016
i swallowed the
bathroom mirror whole
threw an entire bag
of lemon drops
into the highway and
danced on someone else's grave
in a failed attempt at
self-acceptance.

it's hard
to shatter the
saccharine sweet
taste of personal hate
sticking to my hands
like half melted wax.

i've almost
given myself permission
to fail
but not yet.

hasn't it been
stovetop memories
a couple haircuts
and one hell of a year?

scratch the back of my
neck
in a halfhearted attempt
to forget
and i'll take up burning
aluminum pillows
like i took up
loving myself.
Copyright 3/12/16 by B. E. McComb
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