My mother asks me to say his name,
I 𝘢𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 do,
But the air is thick and my voice is thin.

Only the Machine speaks for him now.
The walls have swallowed all the sunlight,
Once a bedroom, now a hospital.
The wires and tubes that keep him alive
wrap tightly around my throat.

I stand there in front of his bed,
fists clenched and breath held,
reduced to a mere silhouette.
I 𝘢𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 touch his hand,
I 𝘢𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 say something.

But my voice can’t pull him back.
What do you say to someone
who’s half there
and half somewhere else?

My mother asks me to say his name,
𝐈 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤.

bite my lip
till it bleeds.

love me carelessly

but please

just 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞
the mess

𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭
𝐲𝐨𝐮
𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞.

The pit is bottomless,
inhabited by detestable creatures
half formed and shifting-
Their teeth like splinters,
their breath the smell of rotting flesh.

They never take shape
Their edges smudged,
But they are poised
to pounce at your weakest.

You fall by your own volition

down, and still farther down.

Because falling is simple

when the pit is yours.

A star is born and another fades
Their incandescence mocks any tears that cascade
Galaxies collide, their chaos resplendent,
Life is but a mere blip in their existence
Meteors crash and civilizations ebb and fail
What good are my tears
On a cosmic scale?
How ephemeral are my memories
Compared to all of eternity?

My left hand bleeds crimson onto my paper,
As my right hand writes the words.
The brittle yellowed pages quake as they
Turn into a battlefield of my sensations.
Violent waves bury
the rough, course sand in my heart
Each crash pulling me closer
To the tender abyss.
Broken record in my brain
“This will never end. This will never end”
The waves will keep crashing
The pages will remain yellow
And I’ll be left
Forever caught between the ink and the abyss.