I tell myself
everytime someone new
starts
keep to yourself, don't let them
know
your dark thoughts, your impulses
your joy
keep to yourself, they'll use it against
you

but then
they open their souls
telling of their darkness, their chinks in their
armour
similar experiences, shared damage
and now we're friends

bonded with the distrust of authority
and hatred of the same enemy
facing the day with humor and parody

one day I walk through the
door
no longer greeted with an eye roll
a smirk
I toss my keys across the desk
hit the power button on the monitor
goodbye scrawls across the screen

I opened up
bonded with this kindred spirit
and now I'm alone

next time I'll keep to myself
I won't say a word
I won't get attached

next time

no one’s eyes made me write—
my life did.
the things I’ve endured,
the family I never had,
the trauma I carry
turned me into a poet.

it forced the ink
out of my veins—
red, yet black,
like the blood
still coursing
through me.

I bleed onto paper
without a knife,
just wounds that never heal,
just pain that never
learns to stop.

it drains me dry—
and yet I stand,
barely.

begging to be taken,
begging to vanish,
to disappear
from a world
I was never meant
to be born in.

stumbling into the main hall
in my stained hospital gown,
my feet covered by those socks
with the grips, my ******* swollen

beyond measure, rock hard for lack
of expression. Eyes that saw me
but didn't question me. My growing
panic when I missed turning in

yet another food option card. Three
missed meals when my body needed
the nourishment more than ever.

The pills they prescribed to placate.
The kindly old man, his lip tremors
and teeth stained yellow, who freely
extended his friendship, who called me comrade. My exhaustion,

my deprivation of sleep and food. Of my right mind. The way I laid my head on the lunch table, asking my new friend if he could watch over me

as I slept, nightmares and demons
finally staved for some indeterminate
amount of time. How everyone there
let me call my mom over and over again, on the precious shared

hall phone. The way I was starved, thinking I would die there. The little card I drew, artwork at its finest, not knowing what reality was anymore.

How I recalled my own father being in a similar mental institution after his own suicide attempt. How he was saved. How I was.

by images of a home
he once knew, destroyed —
the deconstructed fox hole
now a pile of sticks and stones
patiently waiting for the howl
of a broken man so desperate
to revive or rebuild something
not as revolting as it once was.

Somewhere in the distance,
an owl or mourning dove practices
cutting the space with its melancholy
melody, the refrain at once familiar
and strange, echoing a time
between time, nestled
in the crook of calamity.

I calmly take it all in, content
to watch the slow unraveling
of a life that isn't mine, one
or two worlds apart yet close
enough for me to realize

how it, too, yearns for another realm,
for a chance to burn their dead,
to be revived by the only song
desperate enough to crawl
back to the very place
that had once destroyed it.

I remember that night
It was full of light
People laughed
And I smiled

You walk to me
A shining smile
Ear to ear
A face of tall tales

You took my hand
I looked into your eyes
I was drawn
But then I realized

Your charm, your grace
I was almost entranced
But I knew clearly
This wasn't right

You're too old
I'm too young
But you tried
To force down your tongue

I cried,
Yes I cried,
You leave me,
"You're not mine"

You were too strong
I was too weak
You dragged me
By my pant's seams

We were in bed
Your fingers on me
But oh Lord
I make my plea

She forced me
She told me
No one would care
No one would try

Besides, I'm a guy
She's a gal
If we were tried
They'll say:

"Why didn't you try?
She's just a woman,
You're a fool,
A disgrace"

I'm not her man
I'm not a man
Just some boy
With a broken wing

She was my Lord
She was the Queen
Me?  Well...
Just a pleb

So it didn't even matter
Cause why not?
She's reclaiming the power
Her people lost

January 5th,
I walk to my room
Breathing in the cold air
For it will be my last

A rope around my neck
Tears in my eyes
I told the truth,
But they said it was a lie

Now I call Death,
Oh beloved Death
To take me
As her lover

The pain was too much
The insults too many
I'm a man
They say in envy

I shall never fly
I shall never soar
She clipped my wings
My lust, my soul

I breathe my final breath
Lord forgive me,
But after her
I know hell

How come every time
I try to leave it all behind,
Try to forget the pain,
The damage I've been through,
It always finds its way back to me?

It never lets me go.
Like I’m trapped in a cage,
With no way out,
No space to breathe —
But somehow, I’m still alive.

Every time I think I’ve moved on,
That I’ve finally healed,
It creeps back in,
Like a shadow I can’t run from.

It tightens around me,
Like invisible hands on my throat.
Not enough to end me,
Just enough to make me breathless.

And I wonder —
Will it ever let me go?

So cut me into pieces then
Grab my hair, my head and hands
And bury them deep
6 feet under where
I will not rest nor will I sleep

Tortured within this system
A living doll played by sick men
Men waiting to die like me
Standing in line to die next
Like I have

I have died a million times
Each in the wounded hearts of every little girl
Been sliced in ruin with no words
To speak, to sing or carry this song

No not for me—they move along
The dead can't speak
Only eyes from a mother's son
Oh, how they will keep

Keep and keep and keep
Greedy little calloused hands
Attached to those who
Deserve such bitter ends

You have taken everything
Played with this corpse too long
Decay and decompose what
Little life may I bring

You have swallowed them whole
No sweet, soft sounds
Only hellish cries that grow
From bloodthirsty hounds

And Gods, you have taken
Every little ******* thing
From us—the dead
who can no longer sing.