I kept the corsage in the fridge,
Which is why it felt so cold to the touch.
I just wanted to keep it alive
Unlike most things I hold.

I don't know CPR
But I do know how to leave well alone.
A white flower glued to a sequence band
Two things so awfully out of place;
Felt painfully familiar to me on that day.

You wore a red dress
Which speaks more
Than any metaphor I could have written.

I read a lot of books.
I should have seen the signs.

I'm tripping the breaker.
Soaking in the burn of the wires,
Tracing the line back to an old fuse box
With a broken switch
And a battered shell.
Grey with ambiguity and boredom
Seeping productivity like an oil spill,
Diluting the green.

Twenty one centuries.
And some pocket change
Just so we can all act
Like the pressure was worth the diamond.

There are certain parts of misery
That never made sense to me.
I never caught on to the self harm thing,
I figured I already felt bad enough.
I never drank it away,
Because a hangover was just a reminder
That putting a coat on
Doesn't stop the snow.
DABDA doesn't make sense either.
How can you be angry
About something you haven't accepted yet?

I do now understand masochism.
I certainly don't practice it,
But I get it.

The thing with masochism
Is that you really have to love it.
You really have to let go.
My nerves are just nerves.
My skin is just skin.
My eyes just make drawings out of ****.
******* purple from the fourth wall
Letting the people eat a different truth.

My brain on a steady loop
Of Whose Line Is It Anyway reruns
Just waiting to invent the next thing
We all take for scripture.

A dictionary in a bag of bricks.
I watch it sink down the swamp.
Words only mean what we do with them after,
So I never feast until I know there's dessert coming.

I am the stone before the statue.
A block of possibility.
Waiting for guidance like a wiseman,
From anyone that can convince me we're not all mad for trying.

I am the stone before the statue.
Waiting to be carved.
Waiting to be told who I am.

My dream is to smile again
I want to gi e a smile to myself
I'm tired of gi ing a smile to others
I'm tired of ʰᶦᵈᶦⁿᵍ behind my f̶̓̅a̷͗̄k̸̀͐e̷͆͘ smile
Someone please gi e me smile
Please bring back my smile
ᵢ wₐₙₜ ₜₒ ₛₘᵢₗₑ ₛₒ bₐdly
I beg you.

Dust of the earth
Put fear in my heart
And black in my eyes.
How blessed I've been
To live a life so short
And play so many roles.

I've played the bull.
I've played the victim.
I've been the bull.
I've been the victim.

A tac pricked through a wool shirt
Keeps the sunlight out of my room.
I watch the black paint boil over.

Being everyone makes me nobody.

Finding the line
And walking it.
Not giving a ****
Which side I fall into.

Kids like me die
Because of
Kids like me.