He smiled but it didn’t seem to reach his eyes.

He laughed but it sounded empty, false.

He cornered me, made me deaf with words of love,

mute with affirmations shoved down my throat.

I flashed white teeth in a big smile,

took what he gave me,

stayed blind to what he wouldn’t let me have.

We worked like this,

him being mean

me being soft

we both being liars.

And sure it hurt a fucking lot.

But that’s what pharmacies are for;

searching for something to kill the pain

so you can live in the moment 

fake contentment and stay sane.

Lucien paced in front of the podium, stained glass soaring above him, the light falling on him in a way that made him seem purer then he felt, then he had the right to be. “Dear God, dear lord, dear vauge mascular man with a beard or a sword,” he snarled, his voice angry. “Dear good, all seeing being,” He paused in front of the all loving, faggot hater. “What’d I do? I shouldn’t be making this about me but since you’ve seen fit to take him from me, I suppose it kind of is.”

Lucien pulled his fingers through his hair and grit his teeth at the unresponsive window pane.

He wanted something to happen, something to the effect of what he was feeling. Maybe have a volcano explode or the walls to crumble. Something to signify the way he felt staring at an empty builing waiting for divininty to rain down and grace him with answers.

“I prayed daily and I sent you offerings and I took weird ass occurrences as a sign you were there but now?” Lucien’s voice broke. “Now I don’t know if I don’t believe so much as know you can’t be all good. Because you can’t be all good and all powerful and if you are all powerful you’re a sadistic fuck and I want nothing to do with you.”

Silence resounded through the cathedral. Lucien stared at the pews with unseeing eyes. All he saw was empty seats, empty rooms, empty promises. The lies they were taught as truth, that happiness was around a corner if you had a little faith, that bad days were just a test. “I’m not leaving you in a moment of rashness. I’m calm and I’m abandoning you as you turned your back on me.” With trembling fingers Lucien pull the necklace with the cross off. He dropped it and walked away. The atheist didn’t look back.

Click-click-click

My nightmares were absolute, present and vivid and incessant and everywhere. When I looked up from my hands, there it was; horror and dripping blood. When I meet it's eyes, it grinned, a parody of a smile twisting it's thin, ugly lips.

Click-click-click. It was the dark before dawn.

Lovingly, it snapped it's teeth in my direction as it dug claws into its own stomach, pulling out ropes of it's own intestines. It laughed as I screamed.

Click-click-click. It was the timer going off, killing the hope.

It crawled forward, the contents of its abdomen spilling into the floor like some grotesque snail trail. It's adams apple bobbed excitedly as the hellion panted in my face. My skin crawled where the rancid air touched me.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up," I mutter to myself, blunt nails digging into my own thighs. The miscreation reared above me.

"But baby," it cooed in that obscene clicking tempo, hell-bent on driving me insane. It was the rattling of your car, a moment away from catching fire. "You are awake. Your eyes are open. You flushed your pills, you paranoid freak."

Click-click-click. It was the electric that came with shock therapy.

"Oh dear, someone get the paddles. She's seizing."

Click-click-click. It was the end.

Don't tell me to look on the bright side,

because I am the bright side,

at least I am to you,

and to my lover and my brother and my mother.

I try so hard to keep smiling,

because when I do

it's wide and white and infectious,

but when I don't it's small and it's twisted and it's bitter

it's ugly

because the world is ugly

and everyday I try to fight the world

but the world is an opponent you cannot win against

because it is too big to be a direct target.

There's no winning against something that's only in your head,

because your head is your weakness,

your Achilles heel

at least it's mine,

tell me is it this way for you to?

Because you don't act like it

and it's really confusing for me.

I'm not sure where to go from here,

or how to keep breathing stale air and unsure gestures.

All I know is you tell me to keep looking forward.

But there is no forward,

because for so long you put me at the front of the wolf pack.

Where do I go when I'm supposed to be the leader,

and the horizon is ended

and all I'm seeing is empty space.

There's nowhere to go and nowhere to turn and I just stay still

And it eats me up

It doesn't have teeth though,

it's just tight and uncomfortable and everyday is painful

but no I'm not suicidal

so no you don't need to put me in the psych ward

or put me on a 72-hour watch

or take away my razors

or my rope

or my chairs

because just like my fear of heights and the darkness

you cannot take away my deadly things

because they are in my head

and they will kill me

as surely as a serrated blade or a noose made out of sheets

I am not safe from myself because the horrors in my head are dangerous

and you aren't aware I need help,

because I am the bright side you look towards in darkness

and the light isn't supposed to go out.