You smoked menthol cigarettes when I met you.

The kind you crushed.

The kind I didn’t.

The stage returned you to me with stained fingers,

Guitar strings and all those pinched cancer sticks.

Between thumb and finger.

Between breath and silence.

The way I lost my grandma.

The reason my dad gives me shit.

Other than you.

You remind him of someone,

Someone too close to home.

But you’re not him.

You only left because I made you.

He left because growing up is not the dream we think it is.

His dreams were bigger.

You still haunt mine.

Every decision I made was for someone that wasn’t you.

Someone that wasn’t me either.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry that I didn’t see you.

I’m sorry that I didn’t let you see me.

This sounds like a daddy complex,

Written on the back of a suicide note.

It’s neither, or it’s both.

The suicide of some complex that raised me in absence,

The death of some guilt I don’t deserve.

There is no hate here.

There is only me.

Abandonment issues have all run out.

Self-loathing has come to hate the concept of massocism more than I have ever despised myself,

Or you.

I’m letting go of everything,

except the need to hold on,

To you.

There is a storm stirring below the surface.

Inside us all,

In the atmosphere,

In the tired bones of the world.

There is a fire sparking

To life,

To burn,

To end what was before.

There is a change coming,

A hailing wind of struggle.

Such trees will grow,

From ash,

From destruction.

Stronger,

Tolerant,

Patient.

These trees will stand,

Where we could not.

Sit down with your mother. I'm not going to tell you to talk to her. I'm going to do worse. Take that knife, that gun, those downers, and cut her, shoot her, shove those pills down her throat. Now, take your father aside, your brother, your sister or wife or lover, and do the same to each and every person that cares for you. This, this is what you are doing when you take your life. Your pain ends, becomes theirs, for the rest of their lives. You are not taking the easy way out. You will not just end your life, but the lives of those that hold you dear. If you cannot be strong for you, do it for someone else.

I'm not sorry, but trust me, you will regret it and it will be too late.

Sit down.

I never asked for a white picket fence.

I can build a yard.

I can build a home.

I never asked for more than love.

That, I cannot build.

I'm drawn to the destruction within you.

Familiar, a comforting mirror of the darkness,

Inside myself.

These parts I should ignore,

Creeping, charismatic,

Bold and dangerous.

I see them in you,

And I want them.

I want you.

I want to consume the urges

I should loathe and deny.

I want to become them.

In you,

I see the escape.

In you,

I can die slowly,

For someone else.

Arizona,

Your sky is afire.

Not in sunset

Rather,

Panic.

The winds shift.

Clouds of pink rise in evening fall,

Smoke

A wall around the horizon,

Penning in the stars,

Driving the moon to hide

Only at the corners of the sky

She is orange with worry.

Overlooking,

Houses as they empty,

Hearts full of fear.

The air smells of camp fire,

Smells of danger.

Each morning,

Waking with plumes of grey.

Tomorrow, let there be rain.

I don't like the stinging insult

Of perfume on my sunburned skin.

It's poison, and I know it.

Yet I still breathe it in.

I'll wear this dirty sundress

Over modesty's lament.

I'll take your sharpened stares,

Until my self-esteem's cement.

They say beggars can't be choosers

So I've never been to church.

Maybe I just don't get the concept.

Maybe getting it is worse.

I'm not quite sure what I mean here,

Although I meant all that I said.

Sometimes my stitches wiggle loose

Before I've found another thread.

I'm not a thief, but I'm a liar.

Believe in what you want.

The truth is that I'm neither.

I have nothing else to flaunt.

They tell me it's your birthday.

As if this day didn't resonate inside my bones.

Notified,

Memories refreshed by a sorrow-less pulse.

An electronic reminder,

Incapable of understanding

How twisted is the knife fate aims at our hearts.

Paths carved through the ones we love.

The ones we lose.

How lonely I feel

Your face on a screen.

The ghost in the wires

At the tips of my fingers,

Forever out of reach.

Better than pieces of nothing

Broken little somethings

Were things

Once.

I'm eating leftover blue cake at midnight.

Cake from someone else's party.

A gift

Scraps

Half full

Always empty.

Alone, midnight is heavier

Quieter.

Thicker with the taste of silence and cold sheets.

Blue tongue,

Blue teeth.

TV binges and one more beer.

Company in the guise of bad habits.

Loneliness in the mask of indulgence.

Alone is dangerous.

Why wouldn't I...