A series of unknowns

Groups of tears

hear lies about death and wishful thinking

here lies drunk and blissful evenings

fearing leaves falling too fast

past couples of strangers who don't last

losing face in a strange place

keeping cool in a humid room

clearing your mind

finally saying goodbye

To me, life is like a preview to my inevitable death.

It is the tutorial of a game-

The prologue of a book-

The first fold of an origami crane.

Death and life are one in the same.

Because to me, they’re both just an unpredictable road to be travelled.

Life is a series of contradictions and paradoxes, dosed with you and me and everyone else--intermingled, singular, terrible. Sometimes the will to live outlives the desire to live; the people we love and the places we inhabit fade like the chalk circles we once drew in the pavement. Memories, lost.

Check, double check, triple check, but what do they expect?

They come to me and see, but they are not willing to accept.

I show the truth but people will see what they want to see.

I reflect, but they project, sticking all of their insecurities on surrounding shelves.

Continue to perceive but never working on themselves.

If I am an extension of them, with no body all my own.

I hope to destroy with stone, this glass, like shattered bone.

I wrote once about

a parallel universe

one where the ending

is the same as the beginning

and I think when we

look in the mirror

it sees in our reflection

the reverse image

backwards and beautiful

our faces parallel

only to what we think

of ourselves

the red ribbons round your arms don’t look so pretty

once they pool in your palms and drip to the floor.

you look at me and

your hate distorts my image in tears,

it grates on my lungs with every breath.

it locks me in the mirror with a burning gaze

that traces the scarlet trail up my wrist,

until your diamond-hard eyes meet mine, edges and all,

and if looks could kill -

no,

if looks could mutilate,

if looks strip my bones, split my skull,

if looks could remold flesh and brain,

i might be made into someone you could love.

i’m sorry i could not be enough

on my own.

a boy averts his gaze

every morning and every night

a fog curtains his face

every waking second and every sleepless dream

doesn’t know who he is

doesn’t know who’s staring back

as cataracts skew, tinting rainbows

into shades of deep to dead lead,

and shawls the noose inching closer

to the jugular pumping ash

to leave the house is a task

too hot for a hoodie

so when he needs to, he wears a cap

a helmet for the eyes chambered in 7.62′s

and hides his from God’s scope glint up above

doesn’t know who he is

doesn’t know who’s walking O’s

as mildew grows and encrusts his blast room

into an echo-chamber cornered by ma’s CCTVs,

hotboxed in smoke off of his strucked match-head

CO monitor beeps the beat of his heart

but his thoughts deafen

and so this monotone song is sung from a swan’s beak,

a lone send-off to the wolf’s den