Box

Stick

Scrape

Flame

Small

Pretty

Hot

Hot

Smoke

Acrid

Fire

Blaze

Ash

Dark

Stick

Scrape

Flame

Warm

Close your eyes and breathe, they say

Inhale and make your problems go away

Exhale and let it dissipate

But relaxation isn’t within my fate

A chorus of steady in and out

This stress I cannot exist without

Just relax and breathe, they say

I still can’t make it through the day

Bitterly, savagely, deeply

battering ram anguish crushing neck

I think I remember memories that haven’t happened (yet?)

Self-fulfilling prophecy, I read and then think and internalise ruminate mull over massage, fingers denting skin until it becomes part of me, my falsified history

I am a consumer of pain I take what is not mine to feel and devour it, ravenous

I’m looking for an excuse to be broken

I know mine isn’t good enough

Let me sing your beauty

Let me worship your light

Let me dance your laugh

And paint your brilliance

Let me sketch your shadows

Let me sculpt your gait

Let me carve your desires

And whistle your dreams

Let me write you a poem

Darling, dear, beloved.

The human brain has a tendency to find

patterns in places where there are none

Maybe that’s why

You’d loop your fingers through mine

Graze your thumb across my knuckles

Tuck my head in the space between your shoulders and neck

Stroke my legs and let my hands run through your hair

Smile that slow, sleepy smile

And still not love me like I did you

The worst kinds of pain are slow

An excruciating drip-drip each drop is

slippage of sanity

watered-down willpower

everlasting erosion

This is what it means to waste away.

I wonder if we ever microchipped ourselves with homing signals and forgot

Because no matter what we’re doing I find my fingers skating circles on your palms

Two binary stars, caught in limbo, in an everlasting dance

It’s funny how well they fit together

(we fit together)

The Law of Universal Gravitational Attraction: we inch closer and closer and closer arms melded it’s tactile immersion

My fingers are braided into yours, palms brushing it’s a back and forth you squeeze and I squeeze, two of us, three pulses and I let my thumb wander across your knuckles

Soft, soft strokes

Our fingers wind and unwind with each caress like we were wired for it a fire crackles in the hearth of my chest I’m

Home.

I treat people like answers to questions that should not be asked aloud

My chest rings hollow, caving in I crave anything anyone that can hold me up for just one more second

It’s really not about you

It’s desperate, pathetic how selfish I am I latch onto any shreds of kindness and wring you out bone dry wounded animal I want to feel less broken and you’re my next fix

You think I’m in love with you I wish it was that easy to lie to myself but

I just like the idea of it- doesn’t matter the face or textured hands or cracks in the voice my daydreams are a fill-in-the-blank with whoever’s closest by

If you’re going to pity me do it for the right reasons

You continue to indulge me- is it due to your spinal inadequacies or the dark satisfaction from a trainwreck and you just can’t look away

I drape myself all over you- figuratively, literally- you stand still enough that I won’t fall but have your arms ever been open

I wish I had enough pride, any pride but this is just too easy

You’d say no if you wanted me to stop you haven’t

You haven’t said yes either

Lord, you’re so passive you don’t care enough not brave enough to open your stupid mouth I hear the judgement all the same do you like me at all or do you just feel sorry enough to put up with my toxicity putrefaction

Pathetic pathetic pathetic

Do you think of me and wince

Pity is worse than hatred worse than apathy worse than disgust

Was every platitude a pretense to sustain a dying ego so fractured you manufactured each ounce of respect to avoid the splinters of fallout

Lacking personhood, denied of humanity can’t have vanity when I’m too wretched to be held accountable

I feel so sick I have to stop I promise I’ll leave you be but

You’d just pity me more