Dogs roam the streets,
Scraping out a meager living
From the scraps thrown out of windows.
There is a house
In the middle of all the others.
In this house
Lives a man,
A man who watches the dogs,
Tosses them food
So that they would not starve.
At times he approaches a dog,
Talks gently and soothingly—
Though he can rebuke them harshly,
But only if need be—
And he will invite the dog into his home,
But the dog has the final say.
The dogs decide whether to follow
And even when to leave.
But the man is patient.
He will wait as long as necessary.
At times he will change his tactics
And send some of his dogs out
To mingle with the wild ones.
His dogs proudly wear the collars he gave them.
They befriend the wild dogs,
Sometimes ostentatiously flashing the collar,
Sometimes just wearing it
Until another dog shows interest.
At night they return to the man’s house,
Curl up by his fire,
Full from his bread and wine.
And sometimes, a wild dog
Will follow one of the man’s dogs home.
There are dogs who leave the house
And never return.
There are dogs who fashion a collar
Similar to the ones the man makes
And they wear it
And say they are of the man’s home,
But they are no more
Than the wild dogs among whom they live.
However, the man is patient.
He forgives them.
He still tosses them food,
Still heals them,
Still speaks gently,
Still awaits the day
When the join him in his home.

I heard a sob from behind the curtain,
In the darkness, I strained to look through;
It was not cloth, *that was a bar.

And i miss you. You tore a rip clean around my heart. And after several months of ignoring me, the stitches i made could be taken out to reveal the nasty scars. The broken thing inside of me seemed to be breathing properly, and on your birthday you forgot who i was. A knife sliced through the scars, disrupting already damaged tissues. Never before had i remembered hate being a comfortable feeling. Hurt, ached inside of every cell. Birthdays seem to be a trap for us. You left me on mine. You forgot about me on yours. Another couple of months went by, you forgot about me even more. I tried to forget and move on. My hope failed me again. I stayed awake that night, until the sun rose on my sorrow. Funny how a sunrise can give you such a sinking feeling. I cried, hoping the tears would swell me to sleep, they just made the pain seep into my face and my collar bones. I thought about you that night, wondered if you were alone with your thoughts again, letting the back of your eyes rot with the white of the ceiling in your room. Or were you out in a darker place, getting high as your heart continued to suffocate? When they told me about what had really happened between you and them, everything connected. And unlike how i found out you had crawled back to her and she denied you made me happy, this only made things immensely worse. It was largely the fact that i gave you every part of me, salvaged all the small pieces and bundled them for you. You treated me like an object instead of human and i was too in love with you to realize it. But the thing is you can't walk around hurting people every chance you get. You asked her why she didn't care, well what about you? How could you dispose of me so quickly and in a rush as if you had committed a crime? For a time rage consumed me. Washed over me like running water. I wanted to tear you down and watch you disintegrate into a lake of sadness. Every other person in my life knew there was a million reasons for me to leave you. No one cared to save me. It showed me that no one is gonna be there when you're drowning in corrupted love. But i have always wanted to save you from the destruction coursing through your soul. I always wrote about burning the sentiments you gave me and collecting the ashes in a jar as a gift to you. And the twisted part of me figured that as much dust as i collect, equally would be your sorrow. I had only wished for you to stop breathing in so much dust. My mind seemed to go through a fluctuation between hate and misery. There was never an in between. I wished for you to stop cupping your hands to catch my tears so you could wash away your grief. When dejection turned into loathing you made me hurt other people. You lit matches for me to burn bridges and gave me a sledgehammer to destroy homes of happiness. Eventually the chaos got back to me and i ended up eroding myself. I convinced myself i was to put myself in danger to feel alive. Well the opposite occurred and i started dreaming about you. I dreamt of your smile, your laugh, your eyes, with an illuminating spark to them. Waking up was like realizing i had been buried alive in a small coffin, and I'm sure you don't remember how claustrophobic i am.  The fourth night dreaming about you, i turned into the living dead. I slowly melted into a shadow, still frames of you glued into the creases of my mind. Soon enough only wishes swept through my mind. I asked a god for some sort of baptism, and it never came and any form of faith diminished from my eyes. How could one person instill so much pain?

Bury me in snow and spread my ashes to the breaths of the ones I loved so they forever ******* name on their tongues to be forgotten.
See my soul at the bottom of light having tossed my body into salt and water and sold my flesh for food.
Find my mind guilty of ****** to confess that my hands aided and abetted a crime that my knuckles committed
Send the drum away on a stretcher just to hear the beat weaken so you can pull the plug.
But the vibrations are permanent and the circle plays on