Untitled

I don't just forget you I bury you

No flowers No prayers No soft apologies whispered to the dirt like you deserve something gentle

You don't

I remember everything the way your voice could turn cold mid-sentence like a switch flipping from love to punishment The way you'd study my face just to find where to press hardest

You didn't love me You hunted me

Picked me apart slow piece by trembling piece until I started handing you the knife myself just to get it over with faster

Do you remember that? Or did you rewrite it again so you could sleep at night?

Because I remember begging Not out loud you trained that out of me but in the quiet ways

the way I shrank the way I nodded the way I said "it's okay" while something inside me was screaming it's not, it's not, it's not

You carved your name into my head not with love but with repetition gaslight after gaslight until reality flickered like a dying bulb

I doubted everything Except you

That was the worst part

You made yourself god in a world you were poisoning and I worshiped you because you convinced me I was nothing without you

But gods bleed too

And when you finally slipped when the mask cracked and I saw the rot underneath

I didn't run

I burned

I burned every version of me that still reached for you Every memory that tried to soften you Every lie I told myself just to survive another day beside you

Now what's left of you isn't a ghost

it's ash

And even that I refuse to carry

So understand this not as closure not as forgiveness but as something colder

If you stood in front of me now bloodied, broken, begging

I wouldn't hate you

That would mean you still matter

I'd just look through you like empty space like a stranger I once mistook for something human

You didn't break me

You taught me how to kill a feeling and not flinch

And now

There's nothing left of you in me

Nothing like a keify hash bowl from the pipe you all know and love,

They did this with crack.

They do this with fentanyl.

They did this with opium.

The supply comes first.

Then, the demand.

Because people were fine when they didn’t know about it. Once it’s introduced, and word spreads, they want it.

Fame functions this way, too.

Sometimes you can look at the clouds or the trees and they look nothing like clouds or trees or the sky or the ground.

The performance artist Kathy Change set herself on fire while Bing Crosby's sons shot themselves out of the music industry forever.

I sometimes wonder about the inner lives of polar bears. Are they lonely out there in the winter? Do they ever long for summer?

The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze jumped from an apartment window into the world and then out of it. Peg Entwistle, an actress with no lead roles, leaped off the "H" in the HOLLYWOOD sign when everything looked black and white.

When we people saw color in films for the first time, did they feel something they had never felt before?

Ernest Hemingway put a shotgun to his head in Ketchum, Idaho while his granddaughter, a model and actress, climbed the family tree and overdosed on phenobarbital.

I once opened thirteen fentanyl patches and stuck them on my body until it wasn't my body anymore.

I like the way geese sound above the river. I like the smell of freshly fallen snow before anyone has left their footprints. I like the little soaps you find in hotel bathrooms because they're soft and somehow beautiful.

Sarah Kane hanged herself, and Harold Pinter brought her roses when she was still alive. Louis Lingg, the German anarchist, lit a cap of dynamite in his own mouth though it took six hours for him to die.

My favorite part of traveling is bringing a book to read. I like to visit another place while visiting another place.

Andrew Martinez, the nude activist, died in prison, naked, a bag around his head, while in 1815 the Polish writer Jan Potocki shot himself with a silver bullet.

I would carve a poem into my silver bullet.

Sometimes when I find a bug in the house I’ll catch it and let it go outside. I often wonder if the change of scenery makes them suddenly scared. I once brought a spider back in.

Sara Teasdale swallowed a bottle of pills after drowning her sorrows in a hot bath, a bath tub in which dozens of Roman senators opened their veins. Larry Walters became famous for flying in a Sears patio chair and forty-five helium-filled weather balloons. He reached an altitude of 16,000 feet and then he landed. He shot himself in the heart. He was a man who flew.

In the morning I get out of bed, I brush my teeth, I wash my face, I get dressed in clothes that look good on me. When I look in the mirror I try to smile, I try to remember to be happy.

Kurt Cobaine numbed his pain with all the heroin he had alone in a hotel room and then with the last bit of strength he could muster, shot himself in the temple. Amy Winehouse sang herself to life and then drank herself to death.

I like watching ducks swim together in ponds. When I watch them I wonder if they ever purposely fly into buildings when the lake gets too cold. I wonder if afterwards, the other ducks miss them.

Heroin doesn’t arrive like a villain It comes quiet Warm as a lie you’ve wanted to believe Sets its hands on your shoulder And says, rest now

At first it softens the world Rounds the sharp edges of memory Turns pain into a distant echo Down a hallway you promise You won’t walk again

But it keeps the keys

Days collapse into each other Time becomes a blur of hunger and relief A heartbeat measured In how long the mercy lasts Before it demands payment

Your body learns new prayers Shaking hands and sweating skin Bones aching like they’re trying to escape You swear tomorrow will be different While today digs deeper

Mirrors stop arguing with you They just watch Eyes hollowed out Skin carrying secrets You never meant to learn this fluently You don’t recognize yourself But you know exactly How to find the vein

Heroin takes everything slowly So you don’t notice the theft Friends first Then pride Then the future you used to imagine Without laughing

Love becomes collateral damage So does sleep So does hope Even fear gets tired Of trying to save you

And still When the night is the longest And the ache starts screaming You reach for the thing That’s killing you Because it’s the only thing That promises silence

Not peace Not healing Just quiet

You weren't love not the soft kind people write about with sunsets and safe hands

You were a needle waiting patiently on the counter while I told myself this time will be different

You slipped into me easy warmth blooming under my skin like forgiveness I don't deserve

And god the way you made everything quiet

No past no future just that slow, honey-thick moment where nothing could touch me

I called it peace

But it was just you rewriting my blood teaching my veins your name

I chased you through empty nights and bad decisions through promises I couldn't keep through every version of myself I swore I'd never become

You made ruin feel holy

Every high had a cost every touch took something I didn't notice was missing until I had nothing left to give

and still I would've crawled back

Hands shaking mouth dry heart begging for another dose of you

because loving you felt like flying

and leaving you felt like dying

so I stayed sick called it devotion called it fate

called you my