I've stopped believing in the pretty things
the beautiful words strung in a web too good to be true
I stopped believing I would find perfection
even if it was just perfection to me
because life truly isn't fair
and life isn't beautiful
It's corrupt and distant
a movie with a lost director and bad cast
I want to rewrite the script
I'm sick of this improv game and technical difficulties

Everything about me dwindles down to this
broken body, mangled branches, rivers of blood
I am nothing more than true unbridled feeling
and sometimes that scares me

Love, as I've come to know, is  a shapeshifter
every time I experience her she is in a different form
but there is always some semblance of nostalgia every time
I used to think every new love would be my last
and figured that every past love was a misunderstanding of the term
but I've come to realize that every love will be different
every love teaches me new lessons
and I could not be more grateful for what she's taught me

I can just make out the blurry red of your shirt
They way colors blur is not new to me
My eyes have been blind for a long time
My life painted in water color without my glasses
But this isnt the same
My eyes are hot
Saltwater threatening to fall
My dam of emotions is breaking and all the hardware stores are closed
I cant repair this in time
By morning I won't need concrete anymore
I'll need a boat

   --God once hated his creations so much he wiped them out with a flood

I denied what was going on for a long time
The lack of I love yous
The late nights and early mornings
I should have seen it coming in hindsight
But your lies were always lullabies in my head
Calming my fears from my paranoia and assumptions
I should have listened to them and not to you
You were never a good singer anyways
And I never did like lullabies

It's been hard to find my muse since you left
You were the source of so many of my poems even though I tried so hard to deny it time after time
I realized when you were around I was drinking profusely
and my drunken brain finds poetry to be great company
just personal enough to offer comfort but just distant enough from physical contact
poetry doesn't look me in the eye shaking my shoulder until I snap out of it
poetry lets me sit in this shallow puddle in-between of swirling emotions the English language never bothered to name
So my muse hasn't been here much since you haven't
but my depression hasn't been here much either
nor my anxiety
I stayed constant without you here
its kinda funny, huh? I have you to thank for the rise of me
but I also have you to thank for my downfall
I'm finding my muse again--
this time without you
and this poetry will be that much more beautiful
watch out
she has risen from her ashes

A few weeks ago
while in a state of mania
I wrote down a physical bucket list
and you know,
I never thought I would cross anything off
Always figured my increased motivation through increased serotonin was untouchable by my average
instead I found myself crossing two items off yesterday
I succeeded where my mania said my depression would fail
I wrote more ridiculous tasks
who knows what I'm capable of