Giving up:

It is when you look at the chef's knife at a strange hour wondering if it is sharp enough to draw blood. You already know it is, but the white lies beg to stay within your skin.

Don't you dare say I gave up, or I am giving up.

1. Especially when I cry with anger glassing over my eyes.
Bleeding out all the bad truths & rusty faults, for a better day.
I have not given up if I look for truth over sweet fiction.

2. How ferociously warm and red my cheeks are. The kind of red reminicent of berry stains in tumbled laundry. Truth is they were slapped by a ghost's hands.

Or when I found out that hot tears and hot showers feel the same.

Do not say I lack the strength to stay here, when my veins dance to a heartbeat; loud & defiant.

Don't ever say to someone: 'You gave up easily' unless you know the exact & imperfectly precise way their thoughts align into dizzy constellations.
Like the way you know the back of your hand.

*Don't.

It's something ordinary
To love things beautiful,

But it really is something beautiful
To love the ordinary.

I'll burst into a slow bloom
from
the tongues & flickers
of
fire
itself.

For I have cut through spidery wisps of white lies.
We have both lived through pin-****** of pain
and
see, I told you there would be smudges of sunshine again.

Once I saw an x-ray of a heart and I was alarmed by its smallness, its translucence.
A thing we ask entirely too much of.