no i am not kind, i will pull your heart out of your chest — stain it with fleeting moments of softness before running it over with my train-wreck hands. i will pick you wild roses — they all die in my palms; maybe so will this love. i will kiss you and hold you, as we slow-dance our way to disaster; all we can do is sigh and crumble like greek ruins dying in a modern city. is it so bad, then, loving you with the kind of love that breaks and terrifies, and leaves you hurting and burning and wanting more? is this so bad, then, when it's the only way i've ever loved, and the only way i've ever known?

i need a safe place to take off my skin and scoop out all the sorrows it carries. it peels. it burns, like a banished soul. but i have stopped saying my prayers — they just crumble into a ghostly sigh. i need a safe place — to take a peek at my demons without looking like one of them: a hurtful father. a forsaken son. a snake that sheds its memories and sins. i need a safe place to still my breathing — without my fingers pressed on a bruise and without my hands around neck. i need a safe place — a place away from all these thoughts, away from all these hurting. away from all of me.

i.
the scent of sorrow, hanging in the air
rotting away what's left of this skin.
wrists — sewn shut
are wrists undone:
the morbidity of it all pervades —
this i confess.

ii.
look not. turn not, for
each careful stare, each scornful gaze
has me falling back into darkness;
maybe eurydice has found comfort in its arms.
maybe so have i.

maybe this is how it's always meant to end.

iii.
lately, sunsets no longer melt
into an afterglow —
they just turn into the night.
at least it dims
the futility of drawing each shallow breath
from places filled with smoke and dust;

there used to be something there:
this, i confess.
this, i remember.

there used to be something there.

there used to be something h e r e.


— fray // november, must you be so cruel to my trembling hands left with no heart to break?