there are so many knives in my skin that I swear I might be sick.

I am not sick.

I am human.

I can't trust water by it's state of matter. Just because it can go down doesn't mean it's easy to swallow. If it echoes, then it's at least partially hollow. Don't try to start a conversation after everything when you still echo through canyons and mountain ranges.

All of the flames are far too warm to touch, but I need the light to see and to be okay.

------

*ignore my ugly and come back to me

summer is for holding hands, not smacking skin that's already excessively bruised with metallic rubber bands.

they don't help me shake off the nausea when I look in the mirror when a page becomes an ocean and a kiss hurdles over death to help keep the torch from giving up, from bleeding out and from gasping oxygen one last time and then realizing there's nothing left in the tank.

the woman behind the mirror can see me; we operated on such dependency that I couldn't even see you on days where I needed you the most. i never felt her hand meet my hand, certainly not with desire, at least. i try to hide my scars in discretion, like on the inside of my cheek just past where my top lip meets my bottom lip on both sides, and behind my knees where the tendons connect the big bones.

but when hide and seek was the game, you didn't ever even care to look in the obvious places, like behind the curtains where my ***** white socks were visible from rooms away.

the inside of your cheeks are so beautiful: i think they always will be for as long as we co-exist with the stars that created us. i hardly ever dream, but when i do, i'm singing to you in every pitch i possibly can about our static buzzes, gravity reversals, funeral rehearsals, and only temperature change that scientists can't agree on, which seems to always correlate with my entrance or departure into all the rooms in which I could breathe the same air as you.

empathy should be a plateau to rest on, not a mountain to climb, and so the winter is warmer and the days are shorter.

i'm not holding hands with anyone until I can take back the canvas that you laminated my fingerprints on to when you ripped them away from me without ever asking to do so.

i'm unmedicated,
but when you fell asleep between your glass of Merlot and the outside of my left leg,
I was sedated.

my bones never enjoyed saturation, or even understood how someone else could experience something similar; they just reflect raindrops like a two-way window pane.

now, it all hits me in brief, powerful bursts like a short-range shotgun blast and in long waves like electroconvulsive therapy that gives you painful memories instead of making them go away.

i hadn't felt anything in years but even brick walls have soft spots. Even spiders can abandon webs and become kings.* Even someone so full of nothing could feel like the new year wouldn't bring more pills and that love could fly without restricted access areas or delays due to what they claim is the weather but is really pain being drained in the wrong sink, one either too puke-stained or too leaky.

i finally realized that color television was a worthy investment. I can recognize how much brighter black and white seemed when you gave me what I perceived to be the inside of your arteries: red, black and blue humming along at a pace that felt synonymous with what I perceived to be equilibrium.

i am no longer sedated

i remember how those jeans looked when you put them on one pant leg at a time, and then when both flickered glimmers of future false hope and came together, met with a zipper. you always told me that the mirror was a lot less friendly than reality, but now I'm not so sure that the reflection was an inaccurate piece of diction regarding the color you drain from the world, first in wavelengths smaller than your pinky toe, and then all at once, like a vacuum.

the skies have smiled and cried and wiped up old tears and crusted snot since you left. it seems like i've brought every single ******* cloud to this piece of paper, rain or shine. it's trite, it's boring, but it's the only sick and sad way of coping with losing every drop of precipitation that changed the dry cracks in the ground into sunflowers. i never cared if they were yellow or pink or black and white. they were real.

it's time to accept that cracked concrete is still concrete and can still grow flowers, even if they are black dahlias or dandelions that the people in my life that have told me that i'll never be good enough deem to just be common weeds. you can't drain my life anymore by draining the color from it. your presence is everywhere, but your presence is gone. i've had enough of fighting the validity of this doubt. i've had enough of enclosing the zipper from the hazel-stained, green dream scene on my lips to mute myself.

we survive by love, and today, there is so much love for every memory i've ever made. your departure is not my self worth. my departure with those who cared enough to stitch up my infected knees is my self worth. sitting in your Grand Prix before Elm talking about potential and wiping the blood off of blades. listening to Parachutes and smoking enough to forget everyone who ever hurt us. sunshine and werewolves. elevators and Aderall. Canada and Virginia. stone walls, long-distance calls, salvia that looked like fudge, dehydration in Williamsburg, the screen porch at Meadow, and choosing not to print out my suicide notes.

today we evolve because you do not define my evolution anymore. today we evolve because i have a voice that deserves to be heard. we all have stories that deserve to be heard. today we evolve because love will always be the stitches that any of our knees will require, infection or not. we will blossom, in darkness and in light, in color and in absence, in faith and in fear.

no matter how deep the planet decides to cave in, our hands will always be there to help pull you out.

and i'll never need you for me to be absolutely certain of that
ever again
.

your cave was a pasture-
far beyond rugs made of the softest fabric skin could feel,
far along field of comfort resting in my arms.
oxygen just never seemed to make sense,
in scarcity.
stairs were just never worth the effort,
labor always coinciding with
disparity
and
nothing was ever clear.
you were as clear as the looking glass we have either all seen or will see when reality becomes as transparent as our minds wish it not to be,
so that we can wish it to be so.

I hope what I see is a dream where I can be
me,
wearing all of my skin, including
shards that you
took.

Wise women and men who have written books have always told me to focus on the light pouring from stars that kindle constellations,
but my eyes refuse to ignore every single bottle cap from the thousands of beer cans I've torn off out of a fear that I'll always scratch the backs of those who need it and that no one will ever return the favor.

My hurricanes will make no difference if the forest has already burned to the ground,
but moving my eyes upward into a sea of stars has been dulled by a neck brace that you embraced boldly when you broke every jar in the cabinet and didn't even think about helping me clean up this mess that turned my dreams into a reality where I wanted to learn from those that have read books and affixed my eyes to the constellations you gave me right here on Earth.

One day,
the thousands of metallic memorabilia reminding me of every hair I ripped out of my head over shattered glass will transform into seeds that will fertilize a field and yield a forest that anyone who ever needs tree for shelter can fall asleep within and dream about love without strings attached or knives in their backs.

I've removed your blade and recycled it,
transforming the blood from my spine into the stars that hold hands with all of the other bright lights composed of the pain that has defined your lives and then helped you shine in a constellation full of flowers blooming from fractured hearts.

We will watch from the treetops,
together.