Esoteric Distortions

The best my body ever looked was laying next to yours The smallest it had to shrink, and the emptiest it felt

Suddenly you aren’t nineteen anymore

And you aren’t dead like you begged to be

You don’t wake up disappointed by sunlight

And you wonder what the forecast will be

Suddenly drowning no longer sounds as euphoric

And a car crash seems unreasonably expensive

You have a favorite cup and movie plans next Wednesday

Suddenly you realize a dull ache still quivers inside you

But you don’t grapple with standing so close to ledges that it makes your friends nervous

Sometimes you still stare at tv static while watching reruns in your head

But you share your home with pain now, and offer to make him tea

So maybe you’ll linger a little longer,

and plan your birthday party

They say we're so developed for our age

Everything inside me is held together by tape

Adhesive is fickle and so is my sense of belonging

I apologize when my insides leak out of my eyes and down my cheeks

Because nobody likes a pretty girl that can't stay intact

My jaw hurts from filling comfortable silence with the noise of needing to be noticed

Once I am, I shrivel under spotlight

And continue to flail on stage

Because an once of observation could pay my rent for months

But nobody gets to see the price tag, or the tape peeling off

When I feel uninspired, I hang myself by my shoulders

Choke me.

Rip through skin and tell me that I've earned it.

Turn romance into a dirty secret that secretes mutual disfiguration.

A warm smile that asks to bare teeth to chew through innocence.

And when we're done

Entangled in fluid, regret, and each other

The Holy Trinity

Consensual emotional ruin

If you had to save yourself

When I lay in bed, I feel homesick But all that lies in front of me is endless pavements

Despite bleeding feet, I continue to walk..

Then crawl

Searching for permanence while objects around me morph into every almost

Rooted out of reach, mocking my outstretched hand

But, I'll continue endlessly seeking shelter that's familiar enough to feel like hope, but new enough not to remind me

Maybe if I stopped long enough to look beside me

I would see that these pavements are not linear

Every frayed string I've pulled has unraveled until I was nude well before anyone had asked me to undress

I think everything I do is with a slight touch of cyanide

Because I have an insatiable and innate wisdom on how to systematically poisen the fresh and alive

That stumble blindly into my life

I am rotted, under clothes and behind a temperate demeanor

And after we're done, you too will be untouchable

Because that is my perogative

And my mortal wound

To make you ache like me in a way that will make you understand,

Modesty Doesn't Save You,

Someone once said that I’m addicted to my own sorrow and suffering. 

Periodically I’ve sat with that thought,

And the notion (hopeful, childlike reckoning) that they could be wrong..

But probably aren’t

Because, for as long as I can remember, there has been comfort in the most familiar feeling I have always possessed..

The soft, syrupy awareness that drowns me in the understanding that:

despite whatever I do, the most solace I’ve ever felt is within the emptiness of complete abandonment and ridicule. 

As Above- Which Has Been A Noose Dangling Around My Neck

A house is a home 

But not when the clock on the wall doesn’t sit straight 

Because of holes from a hand drenched in love

That allowed prying eyes to look in 

Sometimes the eyes show concern 

But not when they’re dilated

And saucepans burn on the stove 

And whiskey bottles are barren  

A house is a home 

But not when the lock is broken 

And so is your nose 

And so is the place that came before this

And so is the clock that doesn’t sit straight 

So furniture is glued to the walls  

To match the ringing in your ears 

And the living room that twirls in a circle 

Because a house isn’t home 

When the clock doesn’t sit straight 

I have found divinity in alley ways,

and salvation next to death.

I had always felt righteous within my anger-

a carefully curated manifesto allowing me to wear pain as proof.

My pendulum has always swung between extremes, but nothing would ever taste as good as rage would feel- like thick tar sticking to my insides that I would refuse to scrape off with forgiveness. My anger was your repentance, and I was judgment day. You'd lay your neck on my stone and your blood would be a transactional agreement of apology.

An eye for an eye; a pound of your flesh for my suffering.