Dead trees
gray skies
but somehow we still see beauty
The leaves on the ground
dead and brown
are just as crisp
as the cold winter air
where’s the love in that?
Smoke coils around me
hanging in the still air
like an angel
in the wrong form and shape
sent to the wrong person maybe
I am unsaveable
never to be unbreakable
emotions unseen
because I drown them all
in coffee and nicotine
A small child passes by
eyes like fire
despite the sky
which is black and lifeless
The stars and moon
they all forsake me
and will never shine brighter than day for me
as they do for her
You see, I am not unbreakable
my emotions still unseen
I drowned them a long time ago
but still I am happy

the very first thought i have each morning when i wake up is "i'd rather be dead"
but i am still so very glad i did not **** myself at the age of fifteen.
in five years, i have known. i have known triviality
heartbreak
physical scars that shine white and straight on my skin, and
emotional scars so deep i am still recovering from them.
but most importantly, i have known love. i have known
love for myself, and love for the people who have sewn me back together
piece by piece
tear by tear
and smile by smile.
i have known these people inside and out
dreams and thoughts and ambitions and fears and most of all,
hope.
we hold each other together at the seams. every time we split
we glue ourselves back together with memories and heartache and drunken heartfelt confessions.

this is me, baring my birthday suit to you. my insecurities
are my nakedness. my heart
is on my sleeve.
i am scarred. i have
rolls and snags and marks where there should be none, i
am coming apart at the seams, i am spilling over
with feeling, with the idea that there is a beyond. what do you think people think of
when they think of a beyond? do they mean the one that comes to them after they die or
the one that happens to the world after they do?
sometimes i hold on to these ideas of almost-existentialism and try not to cry when we read about them in class.
i used to say i was broken.
when i said i was broken, i imagined a sea of smashed lightbulbs, filaments
flickering feebly in an attempt at survival. what i was, was broken mirror
shattered vase
and an unsaveable phone screen. in my head,
i was poetry. but this is me, in my birthday suit. not hiding behind my purple
prose, not hiding behind my blurry concept of broken. i
am not broken. i was never
broken.
i like to think about the fact
that iron flows through my veins. i think about it a lot, the way i used to think
that letting the blood out of them would help me vocalise my broken.
today, i went for a walk and i thought of ways to not go home and make it look like an accident.
(i am fat, i am worthless, i am redundant, i don't deserve to live i don't deserve to live i)
today, i came back home. i ate dinner. i wrote this poem. i talked to my friends. and i thought about whether anyone really deserves to live.
the way i see it, i've been holding on for so long for the promise of bright lights and soft smiles and long car rides into the unknown and someone to fix me, to put me back together
i forgot what i already had.
i have glue, i have drunken confessions and smiles and long drives and longer hugs from people who love me.
twenty-five is just five years away, and it feels like forever.
i know how fast it's going to go. i know. i know i'm going to look back, and i'm going to say
"i'm so glad i didn't **** myself at the age of twenty."

what i'm trying to say is chin up, sunshine.
this feeling will never go away.
you will always feel the pull of steel and you will always look at very tall buildings with just one guilty thought, and write bad poetry, and **** up your metaphors, and
hold on to your hearts of glass and your constellations and your big city dreams, and
that one person you can't stop writing about.
you're going to find your birthday suit. you're going to find your naked
your unprepared
your "i'm barely holding on"
your swan song. you're going to stand in front of someone with a full heart
and an unburdened soul
even if it is for five minutes, you're going to hold your best friend's hand and say
"i'm so glad i didn't **** myself five years ago,"
and
"i love you."

chin up, sunshine.
it's never going to get better
and that's more than okay.

No easy ends - no simple way
to create a finale
of all that feeling,
buried deep. Trapped.

The heart - conduit
of all the good, and pure,
loving and fair
in that childlike innocence,

but too the cage,
controlled, emboldened, refused
by the cerebral gatekeeper.

Why let that emotion
out? Is it self-sustaining?
Should it be?

Searching in the thickness of grime
and the transparency of glass
both to find that balance
between self and self;

the self that needs its own,
and the the self that needs
its other.

To what end is the search
viable, in being separate
from the internal pervasion
of anxiety?

What does it mean to err irrepressively
from one side
to the other -

a seemingly ceaseless internal script
written drunkly, incohesively
scribbled across the walls -

is it damage?
A calamity of mentality
and an unsaveable prospect
to none of earth - and perhaps she knows.

So many things to ask, each
with an answer he doesn't have
or doesn't want to, tied
to questions he can't put into words,

for her sake, for his, for fear
for love or selfish compulsion -
there is no knowing.

Wordsmith indeed, unable to weave
the most fundamental askings,
but foolish enough to think
he has done it in his moments.

The tale of saving the broken one
has outlived its life
at the forefront of storytelling.
And still, she saves him.

In every word,
every touch,
every grasp,
every time
and every day,
she saves him.

And to think herself the wrong,
to take on the trial - the insanity
of only the loyal,
of only her.

The story is titled simply:

a crooked man,
and the perfect lady.

I am the kind of broken you cant fix with super glue. I am not held together with a hot glue gun. I am just unsaveable. Unable to be salvaged, you must toss me away in the trash. I am like a old lamp you hit when secretly playing ball in the house. You never told your mom about me despite how often I was there or missing. You took a broom and dust pan and swept the big pieces into the trash, but as you found the little pieces, you kept them. You kept the small broken bits if me hoping they would aid you in the healing you were doing but honey, all it did was break me down more. You were the erosion that ruined me. The stream that carved out so much of my center I collapsed in on myself. I became a sink hole within myself. It wasn't by choice. I wanted to stand strong. I wanted to prove that I was what you wanted, that I could shelter you. I wanted you. I wanted you whether it was under me on a Saturday night or next to me in the lords house on a Sunday morning, I wanted you. All of you. But you only wanted little pieces of me. And that's okay. I'll just be here with my chips and bruises, smiling at you in your entirety.