My English teacher said
The opposite of love
Is hate.
But it's not hate,
It's apathy.
Hate still breathes,
It's fiery, raw, and real.
But apathy?
Apathy is a void
Where nothing's left to feel.
No anger, no tears,
Just empty.
So if you ask what's worse,
Hate or apathy,
I'd say apathy,
The silence,
The hollow space,
Where nothing is felt
And nothing is left
Between us.

i.
your shoulder blades bend themselves back into wings,
your spine bows under the curved chapel roof ;

ii.
you say gabriel visits you in your sleep,
tells you with to cold eyes and bared teeth soaked in crimson
that you are the messiah,
before speaking about the end of the world,
the ichor in your palms.
red hyacinth dust drifts off his eyelashes,
and apathy falls off his tongue like boiling blood.

iii.
for the next month, there are bruises on your elbows and the remnants of a dead language rattling in your lungs. you wake up in the river, thighs carved with sigils and crows perching on your shoulders, weeping ichor and ancient clay. the names of your newfound kin ring in your ears until your partner confesses that you scream them in your sleep.

iv.
Gabriel visits again, six months after you
realize that your native language has
slipped from your tongue and realize that seclusion is more of a gift than another cross for you to bear, afterwards, you tell me that he had four sets of wings, three eyes, and seventeen hearts, and the most unusual feature was the trembling in his steps, his inability to remain still as he phased in and out of this world into another.

v.
you say his reverence was a holy march, a fragment of bone, an aching lung.

"i was written by a man" this "i was written by a woman" that.
i was written by myself because no one had the energy to pick up a pen and do it for me. i wrote myself with scavenged ink and put myself together bit by bit with agonizing scrutiny because no one wanted to write the details

"When they talk about the tortured genius, somebody always brings up Van Gogh-
how he swallowed yellow paint
because he wanted to put the sunshine inside himself.
How his psychosis was probably the result of lead poisoning.
They called him a prodigy ,
but what I see is a man who was so sad,
he found a beautiful way to **** himself.
They say, "it's awful isn't it?"
They say, "It's always the talented ones who go before their time."
And me, a 10 year old kid
who's always been told they were so
talented
wonders when I am going to die.

I had a broken tooth and you had a broken car that sang at certain speeds.
I was holding my crimson soaked mouth but we were all laughing.
You were the only one who was worried.
Speeding to the doctor with your hands at ten and two,
sending me the occasional look and asking if it hurts,
does it hurt.
-All the memories of you do.

one time he and i were sitting in bed and i said "where do you feel stuff?" and he said "what do you mean" and i said, "here is anxiety" and pointed to my bottom left rib where the spiders start. he pointed to his throat. "it's here for me."
i keep anger in my breastbone, he holds it in his hands. i feel sadness on my shoulders, he feels it in his lungs.

I wanted to be born as a star
but someone had a different idea.

That's how I ended up as a street lamp. I die too soon and flicker too much. But yesterday I saw a moth trying to kiss me. It almost burned her.
I have heard stars do not get this luxury.