Glass Echoes

Promise me you won't look back: you won't look back, the half-assed bedtime stories and so called freedom: the corrupt, the corpses, rising like the sun. I melted my glass slipper: my shoe, Prince Charming, you never looked for me. I walked the highways, barefoot, covered in soot and I wonder how you sleep, breathing in my agony, fragility: I never wanted to hate you, your eyes like stars and just as numb. The glass was always your favourite. Street corner robber and more honourable than you, more true: there is honesty in the blatant untrue. Gather your armour, gather your armour: I hope you choke on rosary beads. You fight like the rapture and pray like the sunset and I loved you so, I loved.

Willing to the seasons and the isles of liberty: you and I, glass castles and you were my silver bullet, the salvation I never wanted to want. The sun's breath on your cheek, the wind's caress and backlash: cruel intent, the hurt, victims and martyrs and how did it feel, darling? You will heal one day, you will heal one day: you are welcomed, you are not loved. Blood is knowing and blood is the only truth I cared for and you never cared much for lies. Is blood your reason, your love? The morbid cruelty of rejection, thick as tar, the veins of the sinful, the stone cold. Look the shame in your eyes, lingering longer than you did, lingering longer than you did, Dear God.

Walk back and burn all the buildings: watch the flames erupt like woe upon you, shame upon you, like please God please no, like the sobbing and weeping and all the troubles you never knew. The grass is not greener when you are the drought, love. Use her tears, her flesh and soul and become man: we are clay: you are a wax figurine. Sacrifice upon the pale moonlight and I will never forget your blood, your ball and chain and the feeling of lips upon necks, teeth upon lips. We are not without a cold twist, a slit wrist, the way it goes. My mind plays hopscotch and you were an anchor and I was out at sea, darling I was out at sea.

…

…

…

Collab with Autumn, always rad.

There in your arms and you say I'm wrong to live in sin, I'm wrong to live in sin, like tied up in the trunk of a rusted Toyota Corolla and I only wanted to be pure: beyond the terror surrounds and I won't let the million, the million burn I won't let them: you are a hot air balloon and I won't be your needle.

…

…

…

We'll take care of Satan and fall off the abyss and talk us into the calm, the calm before the rain and she wanted to be a moonbeam. I am a dream catcher: I've given up on being a dream. We take the silver halls for our own and I can't remember the last time, our last time. Our final massacre.

…

…

…

That Which Was

Stepping stones in my heart: weighing me down and darling I never wanted to be an apocalypse. Remnants of her broken body: split at the seams like the sweater she loved, like the sweater she burned. You are two am espresso and the boiled over pasta sauce and I never wanted to swear to you

The powerful conclusion, the single freeze frame: all the world makes perfect, brutal sense. Pain forgotten, you envelope me: spirits, enlightenment, like butterflies and torn wings. We become one and the heavens tremble: the Earth shakes: the seas fiery as my constricting veins: bow to us, bow to us. Darling I miss you.

I will baptise this day in your name: in your heart and soul and the way your head throws back in laughter, the tears your dandelions grew from. Take my blade, anger and hate: liquid pours and that's all there is, love, that's all there is like a raindrop in the Sahara and I never wanted to be Noah's arc. I will reign free. Human torment like hurricanes like carries my name and I love you, God do I love you.

A connection being reached, beyond the physical. Our souls meld together, cast iron, heated, shameless embracing: the primitive, the true. The night vanishes, stars, fireflies, the steady droning of locusts all fade away, phantoms loom about in our minds, shadows seen at the corner of light. Sweat slick apparitions of the evening, striving against one another: an impossible struggle, rushing toward the common cause, the common crusade. Ultimate meaning.

I did not know I did not know I did not know what I wanted to know. A three year old, red handed thief, born of time and dead of lost: he will never understand this, the loss of what was never had. Eagles, a symbol of peace? Vultures, of charity! Why, how we idolise that which destroys us and I never wanted to be, I only wanted to become. Do not open the door, do not open the door, please please, God, please. Stretch your muscles, wait for the lullaby: let the darkness cradle you, angels of the fifty seven year old mailman with arthritis and a longing for the piano.

My mind, hooded as the blanket, thick as the night. Fireflies making the air alive, breathing: darting and dashing pinpoints of illumination, speeding about, a minuet of incandescence. The first shy embrace, tender and moist lips, nervous and fragile licks: gentle caresses, innocent as a mother and a newborn, a mother and a newborn.

The unintentional tragedy, the aching for connection. The burnt ends of broken souls like cigarette butts, like ions bonding together, a passionate twin flame and I never wanted to be a broken wine bottle. She is frantic to pass judgement and I wanted to be a saviour. Place your past in a book: put everything you ever took. Set a flame. Watch it cook. Send hope upon a wave: a dying wish before the grave. For all the souls you failed to save, you failed to take. Send my heart into the wind and darling I know it's hard to know where to begin. Wrap your fingers around my heart: you promised a dance to me.

I work on the creation of time and I was not expecting you to catch me, love, I am not expecting to be caught: I was a halfassed catcher and you were God, you were my God. Where are the remains of glory? In rusty medals, ripped certificates? "Congratulations. Congratulations" a repetition like a beating: the unknowing child, fingertips dancing on stovetops, the pain of the pattern, consequences like one two, one two, some of this and some of that and how ironic it sounds like music! Fields of dreams and I was always running and you followed. Hand in hand, touch the stars and pretend we ever meant a damn.

The days are now long without you, my heart begins to stop. Why is this air so thick, hard to breathe? Mental suicide, everything is still, nothing will stop. The thumping of my heartbeat, like Hosanna in the highest, Hosanna in the Highest and I could never manage a prayer without crying, a prayer without seeing your corpse. I am here I am here I am here, please, please look at me, please, please, please hep me. Prisoner of history, prisoner of time, why me: a shell, a blanket, a cage I never cared for titles and darling, you never deserved this, the scars the lightening strikes.

A fellow eclipse of a bit fist, we cry wolf under the haemorrhaging crown. Under the shade of all your snivelling, taking in all the wind of your jump-cliff, and whisper ever so… bring me close to love, darling, bring me close to love. Would you give me a reason to believe, trapped by the world and evil? The love you claimed was but a whisper: here I am, please, do not shun me, for touching the clouds and finding only water, it's only ever water: do not shun me.

I thought myself real, and so we were.

…

….

…

Collaboration with Autumn: I met her on Omegle and she's fab.

Build the great wall, build Niagra falls, build them around me when the angels die I'll be here, I'll be here still. Burn your prescriptions and get high off the smoke: build a bridge and a sign "Please let me live", please let me live. You will suffer, there is no denial. Into spirals, sorrow coils: a childhood slinky, falling, falling. When will we mean more than this, the sadness that lives in the way your fingers tremble, the way your fist clench, your white knuckles and scabs the colour of rosary beads. I am not alone. Build the pyramids around me, a childhood fort: the sky is my blanket and I am suffocating.

…

…

….

I feel uninspired as the roadkill I had for supper and I am a vegetarian, I am a vegetarian and he's going to split my wings, clip, clip, snip. Is it that you sow my ashes, my burnt bridges? The winds, madman's laughter?

The golden gates are falling.

…

…

…

She won remission from the snake inside her blood and she gave up on saving her bones, her muscles, but the liquid pumping in and out and through her body, she won. She won. A hell of a heart and we grew up together, played boardgames together and a heart is not supposed to be blisted, strangled. Misery is but an innnocent's eyes.

…

…

…

The sparkle has broken me, a perfect hatred. You were my favourite disaster and when our greatest power is slowly vanishing, try try try: nothing but a blue sky and love, dare to fall dormant. Dare to fall in the rye: I'll meet you, someday.

…

…

…

Tonight's another night I hold a bottle of Ambien and count to three thousand and if I still want to after three thousand Mississippi's I have to do it, I have to do it. If I wait for hours and I watch the line beat, beat, beat still then I have to do it. I baptise myself in blood and cruxify myself into bliss, into blessing and grace. I take myself, unconquered, still, still defeated.

…

…

…

To us to us to us! God what a phrase. To us the woods are crowns of golden thorns, laughter and tears and the spit on the sidewalk, darling watch your step, love, watch your step. It's not a lifestyle choice, it's not a lifestyle choice, the way my parents sigh. I cannot wait another stab wound.

…

…

…

Catch yourself a miracle and throw one out: darling they said pass it on, pass it on.

We are scratches on vinyl records and I never wanted to skip, I never wanted to stutter. An amputtee, a veteran: fifty six is too young to die.

There are two ways to destroy me. Idolise me. Idolise me.

…

…

…

Rain pours like shot glass after shot glass after shot glass and I cannot run away, I cannot escape her, Eloise the girl who lives inside me: but I never see her in the mirror. Blonde hair blue eyes and a smile that could kill, a smile that kills: I never see her. I see hair the colour of shit and a face of a pig, who lives in shit, living in shit. How ironic to hear and not see! I run and run and run and I never lose the weight, the sky, I cannot kiss the horizon, I cannot kiss myself, I can never lose myself, I can never forget, and shot glass after shot glass: I can still see myself in the bottom of the glass. I can still see myself, at the bottom.

…

…

…

Your lies ease and flow like the tide and sometimes the ring isn't true, but the echo is: I love you, I love you. She often repeats herself and the sentences ease and flow like the tide: her lies, the tide: I hate you, I hate you. Words ease and flow and I am a drowning victim, love, I am a drowning victim. I hate my unhappiness, I hate my unhappiness. It isn't you. It isn't you.

…

…

…

There are words that I will never know and never hear and there is shadows of time for us: the more we chase, the more we have. We wanted the horizon: we wanted the feeling before jumping: we wanted the stars' cementary. Darling, how we wanted! If time is a shadow, surely want is a puddle. We are fickle as we are insane and our ambition, dear god, our ambition gave us life, sustained our life. I never wanted to leave you.

You were my horizon.

…

…

…

Give me a reason for her. The singing of demons in time to her screams. Give me a reason she experienced agony we will never understand, the violation, torn to shreds, ripped to shreds. He burned paradise and she is a phoneix.

…

…

…

I am a drifter and I am not yours,

I wish I was not cruxified and buried, I wish I wasn't my own demons, her own demons. Caverns of the night open and be opened: I was adored once. I was always smiling. Open fields, lost realms, open and control me. I was loved once.

…

…

…

Until you held my hand I didn't know what it was like to be a skeleton, to burn away into oblivion: write your name in my ashes. Like a gladiator, like a frat boy, dead and dead and it's always in vain and love, I am so sorry. I didn't know what it was like until I felt your hand run through my hair, until I felt your hands. Sorrow lives in hands, heavy as a crown of thorns, heavy as iron fists. As goodbye, and I never knew.

…

…

…

Wayfarer.

quelque-part-belle:

They told me shoes were meant for running and my glass slippers never fit,
darling, there is comfort in the cold:
in the blistered and frozen, the feeling of
callouses against gravel, wounds against rain. I arch my back:
Lightning quivers in my vertebrae, the elements
stinging, stringing hot, red scabs -
where is the beauty in this defeat?
Where lies the affections of these black nights?
Loveliness in indifference: What an idea!
The turned cheek is a caress I
can only imagine, I can only imagine. I crawl into the days.
I never cared for the real, the palpable hopes.
I am but a wayfarer: belonging to dust and grime
The forgotten cannot find me: I am eternal, I am lost
In my travels, my stumblings like Christopher Robin,
like whole new worlds. I am better off.
I spit in the face of salvation.
I am better off unfound. … … … The third collaboration between Jackie and myself.

(Source: of-a-ginger)

If there was ever a time I could love you and not cry, it was when the sun turned itself to ash and fell upon the tips of our tongues like snow, like light. If I can tell you I love you and not cry, I wish I was your place, the place you'd go when you're naked and lonely the place where you'd go when they tell you to go home, because what the hell is home where the hell was Icarus's and I think the sky is a bruise and I really think the sky is a bruise like I wrap my hand around yours like mood rings, like promise rings. You remind me of playgrounds, of streetlamps, of happy and home, and I hope you're happy, I hope you're home.

…

…

…

We are Pinocchios, wax and clay and string and wooden bodies, but there is no wrong way to be. Please come back. Please come back. Stare at the road and tell me you'll never look back and you keep walking, walking, walking and I am staring at the gravel like the window to your soul and I cannot love what I cannot see. My spine hunches and we are mass and malice, quivering and shaking and so damn happy it kills. So damn happy it killls.

…

…

…

You are stubborn and I am tired, and you are like a rain in the Sahara and darling, we are all unappreciated, we are all falling from the sky and not all of us are dancers. Not all of us have partners, a wind to the leaves, all you wanted was a horizon to kiss. But you are stubborn and I am tired and we are Christmas lights. I've been put out a long time, I've been put out a long time.

…

…

…

She fingerpainted love letters and her smile was mystic. We are justified as his killing sprees and the angels weep for her, the angels weep for her and she is a faraway land and she can only look forward, she can only look forward. I am dark matter and her flesh is soil. My imagination is sleeping and darling, she is two am espresso.

…

…

…

Beauty is subjective beauty is subjective beauty is subjective why are you so eternal, so infinite and concrete as the sun's rays, real as a burning, real as a tearing of the heart? You are real as a blade across skin and you are lightening, a conscious red, the fluorescent, the spilt fires and the underground and darling, I only wish I could wish this away.

…

…

…

I cried today. I cried because I put up fairy lights and today was another day I didn't think I could get out of bed and seeing twinkles and twinkles, lights like little stars and I cried, God almighty, I cried. It was like having friends: on, off, on, off. Like applause. Like cheering. Every breath I take feels like a miracle and today I felt like God.

…

…

…

I am weathered as a motel bible she carries around, dog-eared and torn, but her hands still felt empty. And I grasp for her hand and I find the emptiness, nothingness, cool and indifferent as the stars, as the clouds. "Moving moving keep moving and keep being and you'll do fine, you'll do fine" and I am glued to the ground, I am a tree, I am a fire hazard, darling, I am a fire hazard.

…

…

…

How embarrassing to be in love! Surely my heart beats loud enough the world dances in time to it, surely the weight of my heart throw the rotation out of balance: surely we revolve around her now. I can only hear the sirens now, I can only see the stars now, and darling, I have never been more petrified than the day you melted me.

…

…

…

Stones in our pockets, we visited Atlantis, saw the stars from the water and you know, there's something beautiful about not being able to see the tears. Before his iron fist, his iron kiss this was our paradise before this was our paradise. I think the loveliest thing is when you can't see. Our chains are invisible, darling.

…

…

…

I have no right being lonely. I have no lost but myself and I am of the value of a safety pin, safety razor. I am not the only one the only the one I am but cracked concrete and darling you are Ophelia and I am so so sorry, so so sorry. Build children's toys of my blackened bones, my blackened souls.

…

…

…

The sky opens like a wound to daybreak to break to day, thousands of leagues of blue, purple, red. Red. She says she lives in the land of malcontent, the land of ill intent. I will make myself a new start out of bottle caps and Starburst wrappers and I press fingers into strings until I see stars, until I see blood. She writes bibles of truth and mutilation and I only ever wanted to become.

…

…

…

I don't consider myself a writer; is that insane? I put pen to paper because erasers are not real because why would I imagine anything not real, why would I live anything not real, I put pen to paper five six seven times a day and no no, I cannot be a writer. I am not a victim of Hosanna. I am not human. I merely bleed.

…

…

…

I never wanted to be your Crusade, darling. I was but a broken wine bottle and you were late night sitcoms listening to Bon Jovi and crying, crying, crying. Tell me a story tell me a story tell me a story, darling, please. There is freedom is losing everything there is no freedom in losing everything and you cry to tombstones of people you never knew, you cry to tombstones of people you never met. You were my only surrender. I wish I weren't crazy, for you, I wish I weren't crazy for you.

…

…

…

I lace up my corset like she ties ribbons in her, french braids her hair and I think there is something beautiful about eyes clawed out. I am a paper sun and you are rising water, darling you are rising water. The moonlight embraces a photo negative and I never knew how to be yours, I am not the blessed. I've been here far too long, love.

…

…

…

Children of the tears, the rain pours like shot glass

after shot glass

after shot glass

and you desperately hide your face

but limb by limb these days past

artistic and obscene:

paradise is deception is paradise

I stand in the sky: the clouds are nothingness

and I never wanted you to see me

…

…

…

She blasts Disney soundtracks and reads murder mysteries and darling, please, one day they'll celebrate us one day one day we will be Gods we want to be Gods. The new age will sing of us, will celebrate us and there is poetry about us, we are infinite because we are. Your skin blinds me: your marquee lights, your gas station pay phones. I lie in the masses.

…

…

…

She drinks Club Soda and pretends it's champagne.

She says she never was at all, tearing at the masses,

colonising my dreams. Sing of Sundays and sweet somethings.

I'm not okay. Smoke and chandeliers and I am cracking.

Light is not infinite

only blazing.

…

…

…

I bottle up my madness. The New Year's shots and the alcoholic's first, age eleven and a half. Being carried away and carried home. Hands holding hands holding machine guns, walking to the school the camp the church the movie theatre and ripped moth wings, how lovely it is to be nothing at all!

The bleeding of a six year old's temple, the boy who decided that soldiering wasn't worth it. Bonfires and books alit like surrender, like convents and asylums and closets and basements and tents in the fucking backyard for two decades.

I bottled up my madness and drowned in my bell jar.

…

…

…

Be still, your fluttering wings.

You were but a child given lungs and thorns around temples, thorns around knuckles. A cross: a sword, the only hope and the only truth there is, really, really, the only really. You were the only really.

And I am only my soapbox and I am only my soapbox, be still your fluttering wings. They said you had all the time in the world.

Sleep escapes me.

…

…

…

Satin tears and ivory hearts and hope is a shard of glass like please please please no please please God no no no no.

Your body was not meant to be a cage. Your body was not meant to be.

A stuffed animal, torn ear and lopsided grin. Burned in the fire. Silence is more powerful than words and all you ever wanted, to be pure as angel dust, pure as fairy perfume, be.

All you ever wanted, all you ever wanted and I was not that and I could not be a silver bullet.

…

…

…

She lives and breathes somebodies and she never stopped caring, she never stopped trying. She smells like complementary colours and two am stargazing, like one day we'll be there, like one day we'll be here. They forcefed me sin but her breath is holy, she is glory embodied. I love her like a horizon embraces the sky and we are just as far.

I am so sorry I am a wet blanket to your electricity.

…

…

…

I write letters to God on old gum wrappers and crumpled up post it notes I write letters to God. I ask questions. I ask of the sun's mischief and the night's halcyon patience. The waterfall's loneliness and the earthquake's masochism and why in the world do we continue to be? If I built a house of cards large enough, could I climb to the clouds? God, why can I still hear her sobbing?

I stopped expecting letters back.

..

…

…

Some days I feel the aching of my heart the same way I feel your fingers entwined with mine like sewn together, like knitted together, like a security blanket and a memory quilt and the towel you tied around your neck. Like a cape. Walking barefoot on soil because maybe then we can pretend the earth is our Mother maybe then we can pretend someone cares or maybe they still don't. Maybe we're made of shit. Listen to the smoke and the air before she dies and listen and maybe you'll still wonder why I don't smile anymore.

…

…

…

lullaby of dandelion showers and rosary beads:

listen, my muse, tales of goliath, the helpless,

the misunderstood serpent, poor beast,

the rising waters and falling dreams,

falling grace,

mother of the skulls

the son who was

the son who wasn't

the son who wasn't and those destined to be

the daughter who was just too pure

but they misunderstood,

they took the song, the sleeping music,

they took it

for a new truth:

bewitched themselves.

…

…

…

Deep inside my chest, a blue jay lives. I know he's a blue jay because I am red and together we make purple and purple is the colour of broken and restored anew, restored anew, broken again. He makes swingsets out of my bones and I have never known innocence is such pain. No matter how many shades of heartache I paint, he is only a bird and I cannot sing.

…

…

…

She was seventeen when she got married at a Motel 6 in southern Wisconsin. Lips red and eyes black and fuck if there's anything prettier than surrendering. Vulnerability is unitentional and darling, there are ways we can refuse to play, there are ways to be martyrs and not be martyrs because we do it for ourselves we do it for ourselves. There is something to be said of ignoring the flowers and letting thorns prick, letting thorns pick you.

Dancing in waterfalls and there is something to be said for a burning stake.

…

…

…

They told me I could be anything and everything and absolutely something. I could be something. Something what something special something amazing something wonderful and delightful. Like dandelions in the summer wind and I've-got-your-nose and sparkling pennies and rusty mills. Lovely. They told me. I carried their expectations like Atlas carried the sky and my knees are buckling, my back is hunched over so I'm parallel to the ground but my lines do not go on forever, no, despite what they say, because of what they say I am not infinite and I am not anything and everything and I am but a fucking pin dropped in the forest and no, I do not make a sound.

…

…

…

The answers are in the shards of stain glass and Dum Dums lollipops on the kitchen floor. The cigarette butts she made chain-smoking to Elvis and Jerry Springer. We're ten feet tall and we haven't stop laughing at the jingling of car keys, laughing, laughing. There is no way not to cry. Tears chasing tears in a game of tag and darling, you are always it. I feel you like I feel my body curl up into nothingness, I feel you like I feel nothingness and you were always more real than my split lip and black eye, split heart, blackened heart.

…

…

…

She feels like a general, like a military general with a scarred face and scared mind and she feels like a winner and a loser just getting out of bed in the morning. Because fighting a battle means losing the war, because pacifism is never satisfied because you can't preach love if your throat is strangled, you can give out hugs with your body beaten cold. She feels like a general and her words are her soldiers, her bruised and mutilated soldiers, marching on despite the futility, despite the fact that the battles end and the war doesn't, the war ends but the battles don't and you still have to inhale and exhale and eat and sleep and somewhere in between have a fucking smile for once, because god knows you'll cry. She feels like a general and a damn fool for enlisting.

…

…

…

Grim mist dances over marigolds and bleeding hearts, weeping willows. And everyone cares, everyone cries. Stabbing darkness does not create light, love, no matter how you squint your eyes. The last breath is further, further, dancing, darling. If we call ourselves Messiahs, will you smile?

…

…

…

Rivers of the moon, beseech me. I never wanted to be, I only wanted to become and the purpose is never so pure as the aspiration, the wanting of arms around waists late at night and lips to foreheads, hands stroking hair, the breathe before the sunset, the red turning purple. Feeling is more than getting and all I want is to want, wanted.

…

…

…

Make me something, make me something. I take things personally like a dagger to the chest, like that's the only thing to touch my heart, the bottom of my heart. Pump itself dry and had a hell of a time doing it and the only things worth it are hell, are hell and Lucifer and rising water. Worth it. What a concept!

She writes infinities into infinities in a journal covered in beat up post it notes and ripped stickers and glued flowers. She feels like a glued flower. There is nothing beautiful in the delicate. There is something beautiful in goodbye.

…

…

…

I am the necromancer of my own heart. I was never meant to be yours. The pacing of lightening isn't mine to control and I shouldn't count the beats, I shouldn't feel the beatings and god knows I've tried and tried and the black sun was alone in caring, alone in being. I know nothing of love and I know nothing of dreams: I only know the inside of my eye lids, the feeling of hands on top of mouths, the feeling of hands around necks and curling up and rocking back and forth to and fro back and forth and I know nothing. Never seek anything: there are no endings here. Closure is an act of violence.

…

…

…

I once knew a girl who would cry at the picking of a flower and laugh into the barrel of a gun because god knows the only thing that hurts is honesty and god knows anything pure is pain, anything that rings too true is deafening, anything that seems too right scars, mutilates, destroys. I once knew a girl who told me that anything that isn't honest isn't real. I once loved a girl.

…

…

…

I reinvent myself like a new paper, a blank canvas, and I am painting blindfolded. Nothing matters as long as it's different and I am trying desperately not to try. It is so tiring to look through a microscope to make yourself into those who look through telescopes, through looking glasses. I am recycled coal passing herself off as diamond, I am stone. Holden, forgive me.

…

…

…

You cry stars and laugh stardust.

Right now a rapist is having his first. Right now a child plays with roadkill. His mother chain-smokes and cries at night. Right now money is swapping hands and lips are sealed and they are burning Korans. Liberty is a burning stake.

You are a one way door and I am falling, falling, catching.

…

…

…

If there is a God, he fucked me up. He forgot to stitch all the way through. Like magnets pushing each other away, like two crooked pieces of the same beating heart, thump thump thumping, like there are two of me and I am split. Objective, detached and reasonable and sensible: I am not special enough to be the best at being the worst there are too many people you are mediocre but nothing different or unique you are you are you are only substandard. Then the side I listen to and I call her Eloise and Eloise is blonde haired blue eyed and an ashtray of a person. Eloise is the reflection in the windows of an abandoned Walmart.

…

…

…

One day we'll go dancing and jitterbug all over the place because hell if either of us has a graceful bone. Maybe our bones compete to feel free, feel safe. We've long since given up on being free.

You'll see. One day we'll sing the gospel's hymns instead of fucking to the sound of bullets. One day we'll wear dresses instead of gas masks because the air is not safe. One day soon. You'll see.

Our love was never meant to be beautiful. One day we'll hold hands instead of grenades. One day the stars will hold us.

…

…

…

Love is the air before she dies. Feel it press against you. Surround you. Encompass you and if there was nothing else, there would be this. The in and out, the deflation and inflation of your lungs, the feeling of passing through. The feeling of passing through. Invisibility. Inhale your grief, your blood and tears, your gasoline and match. There is nothing more than this.

…

…

…

Please understand I think but I am not. Please understand that all I want is to rip out my ribcage and build a birdhouse, knit a scarf out of my veins, carve into my chest, hollow out my heart and store stones inside. Anchor myself. I am a skipping record player: you will leave me, you will leave me, you will leave me. I am on the brink, you are on the verge, who the hell is on the top of the world?

Can you imagine attending the first funeral of the first person who decided nothing is worth their time, including time? Because I can and I can't and god, I will drink myself into oblivion, into remembrance.

…

…

…

I want to write something lovely, something like salt in wounds something like lemons in eyes, something like my grandmother's house is foreclosing and she's eighty nine years old, something like there are one thousand two hundred and ten billionaires in the world and still she'll be freezing her ass off tonight. It's been a while since we've been warm. Some sunrises feel like slit wrists, some fires feel like riverside breezes, like father save me, like daddy save me. Some blood is honey and sometimes I want to write something lovely enough to be nicotine, morphine, prozac. I am as guilty for my breathing as he is for his bullets, and I've long since given up on saving. I am looking for numbing.

…

…

…

You needed me and I'm not sorry, love, I am not sorry. We'll hitchhike to Antarctica, have tea parties with penguins and write journals full of impossibilities. I am not sorry. I am bitter and I am a child and I cannot be sorry for what I could never do to you, I could never save you. I love you. You love convenience and I love you, I love you too much for your own good. I'll crack my knuckles until they bleed and whisper sweet nothings, whisper sweet somethings and paint you a picture of Hosanna in the Highest and try my fucking hardest not to cry.

I love being lonely with you.

…

…