There will be a morning
Like all the rest
When you turn over and open heavy lids
As you exit slumber you are startled
Because you are alone

You fell asleep alone
Yet you will be surprised
You call out, remembering the lives that once mingled with yours
They can be heard calling back
But they are not calling back to you

You lay in your nest
Wondering how all the birds flew away
When you've barely hatched

I begin to hear the screams
First softly
Then on top of me
Each inside me yet racing through me
Each heart beat is a pinprick
***** my skin and pierce my flesh
As you breathe
And I scream
I scream because I don't want you to forget the sound
The sound of people in pain
Sometimes you don't know them
Sometimes you don't know me
Pinpricks draw out my blood to show you proof of the color
I once beat read
I once beat black
Now my heart beats psychedelic screams
Visible screams
Printed on your eyelids

i'm warmly lost in the absence of that aspiring red light,
as your heartbeat is still a stabbing pain in the side of my gelatin femurs,
losing visions of the rigidity necessary to live this life of ambivalent autonomy.

--

steel strings and fibers of teeth eating this flesh like a false promise of love,
i am a windowsill covered by a nebulous, translucent shade,
clothespins existing simply to taper my eyes from the pain.

the stars take no mention of this cynical cycle of self-doubt,
for they're lighting our hearts long after they've burnt out.

and your hazel kitchen recipes are hanging over the paint-chipped railing,
giving meaning to this heart,
a blood-stained peach in constant mourning.

break this furtive glass,
there is no light pointing home,
**directionless map

If the only sound we had to hear at night
Was the sprinklers
Wouldn't things be so easy?
No, we just have to have those pesky kids playing Josie at 3 AM

Red blemishes appear,
And they fester and burst.
Crawling fast, they tear.

No one screams.
No one remembers they hurt.

The skin turns dead --
Flesh black not red --
Bodies becoming dirt.

In the distance is heard
One last choke,
One last word,
Mumbled through the smoke.

Ash rains down.
In this blood they will drown.

And a small voice mutters
                                                 "don't".