aluminum ribs
when you kissed me
you tasted like morphine
and pomegranate chapstick
loved me like a painkiller
'til everything within me went numb
believe me, i tried
spent one year, two years clawing at sensations
futilely reaching for everything
and collapsing in the grass with hands
empty as all the compliments
you mumbled into my hair
most nights
i can see emotion like sunspots
like stars in my peripheral vision
there, but not entirely
but tonight?
i see nothing, feel nothing
just a pink-haired automaton
with wants and favourite colours
but no heart, at least not a whole one
you don't want to go to the movies
with a robot, do you?
to share a blue raspberry slushee
with a machine?
i won't be lonely
all alone in my room
no, i'll be lonelier with you
knowing i could never please you
even if my heart was made whole again
because i can't feel the things
a girl should feel when she's loved
i used to feel guilty
i used to long for death
so desperate as to decorate my early grave
with the poems i made you read to make you understand
and i know it hurt my family
to know i sold myself to goodbyes
but now i think i'd feel anything and everything
to not be hollow inside
so empty that when you touch me
it echoes softly through my bones
so please
kiss me again
tell me all the things you love about me
about life
pinch me until i bleed
i'll write it in a poem, paint it on my walls
make me laugh 'til my stomach aches
make me remember
what it was like to sit at cafeteria tables
and not think about eyes, so many eyes
make me feel
but you can't
you can't make me feel
i'm just cruel and bitter
and mechanical
and sorry, so sorry