crushasphyxia

i didn’t fall in love with you until your skin was already grey and i had to tell you what the weather was like since you couldn’t leave your bed. i didn’t mind long nights in the hospital because making you laugh brought a warmth to my cheeks that burnt hotter than a forest fire, you never laughed at me for blushing i snuck you in alcohol and forbidden foods and pushed you around in that rusted wheel chair, and all the nurses looked at us with miserable eyes that said more than the doctors would ever tell me. naively i thought it was good news when you said they were sending you home; but when i saw you strewn across

i know it's "that" time of year because water tastes hungry the back of my throat always burns and i have a thousand excuses to be nauseous i hate the way she smells my hair with a disapproving scowl but nicotine is the least of my worries my lungs are covered with (sick) oil slick, iridescent memories of metaphorical millennia, and i can still taste all those crescent moon tears thick on the back of my tongue my hands shake while i grind mountains into my teeth and they ache like tectonic plates but you are the richter scale i hold myself to; you acted stronger than the gravity with which i buried myself and while i was nine feet

the first time i saw her i was so enamored with the curls of her hair that when she said hello i told her to be quiet. she smelled like cigarettes and cotton candy but i couldn't tell if it was real she could've smelled like arsenic i wouldn't have noticed when we spoke her syllables rung out like wind chimes on a summer afternoon i asked her out three times and she always said yes my silverwear tapped on my plate and i tried to make small talk but i only wanted to talk about her eyes and her lips and the way her voice quieted the cacophony inside my fragile mind and i never wanted to let go of her paper feather hands our kisses were

our own grievous mortality always one step ahead rustling through the allies between our bones whistling softly as our ears ring; "how annoying."

misery fastened to the coat tails of my smile dusts it's charcoal footprints beneath my eyes and proudly displays my new scars, welted red. i say goodbye but i don't let go. the words i use to sever ties bruise my skin as they walk out the door, another bridge burnt. but i can't handle the anxieties of friendship, i can not stand the waiting, the imminent moment when they will leave me. i leave first. i wish i could proudly boast I Have Lost Four Pounds Since You've Left but you don't like hearing those kinds of things anymore and i have no one left to tell. i wrap myself in quilt scrap secrets and try not to notice the d

messy rooms,              messy thoughts a years worth of memories                   waiting to be forgot three hundred and sixty five days to become an eloquent,            benevolent creature like a full moon, i will be both dependable                            and marveled.

in the absence of your kiss i chew my lips to pulp much like the way they grind mighty oaks into paper. - there's a perverse sense of satisfaction in gagging up stomach acid - my fingers are bruised blue and purple i try to hide the bags under my eyes with makeup colored like the full moon but my face just becomes a lighter grey and makeup doesn't make me look any less sick. - i am in a storm shelter, asking to see the rain wondering how long it would take to drown

winter always lays thick on my tongue sticky and dry, like when you're up all night on speed and no matter how much water you drink you're still thirsty bitter memories of the cold full of the color red and death and tiny pills that i'd take alone when i'm sad i hold my breath infinitely long before i finally exhale on a cold window pane and i finger-paint long winded poetry watching it fade into nothingness like building your life out of sand on the shore of the angry sea and some days i take solar flare-hot showers no music, no singing and words write themselves, burning, across the back of my eyelids telling love s

i knew you were sick because you asked me why i smelt like cinnamon, when i was wearing your favorite perfume: vanilla and lilac. i took a shower while you cut up our decadence, our love spelled out in tight, white lines. i washed with pomegranate soap and lavender shampoo and when i stepped out of my steamy abyss, i tried not to cry as your nose crinkled. you didn't want to go to a doctor. i picked at my finger nails and through a thousand "uhm"s and "ah"s, admitted that i thought something was wrong with you. your skeletal remains lay in a heap on the bed, telling me to stop worrying, saying that everything was fine, it was jus

the ghosts that haunted my symbolic heart have metastasized, i feel them laying heavy in my lungs, i hear them in my labored breath. i don't need a doctor to tell me that it's getting worse because i'm waking up singing in your voice, half-truths that cry nostalgically i step on the scale for the ten millionth time and think if i can murder myself i can certainly kill the demons: two birds, one stone. the late night hotline tells me that suicide is a shameful thing but i'm destroying myself for you, honey. i promised i'd get better. i count the stars as the ocean curls against my toes i count my blessings and my fallacies: a rosary