My gut reaction remains the same
shade of grey I remember finger painting yesterday.
The smears cloak my fingerprints
like manuscripts of the negative.
Sharp enough to break through the holiest of sentiments.
It's night two in the dark alone when I call on the ghosts.
Exercise the demons so I may leave the couch at once and turn the lamp on.
Warm bodies approach- blurred yet familiar- radiating only eyes.
Dull and full of assumptions.
I can't respond.
I reach out and watch as effort manifests as motionless limbs again.
Now, my eyes neither open nor closed, identify nothing.
My hands, palms dripping a simple shade of gloom I've come to embrace, greet my brow.
Grey sweat covers this grey reflection and these paintbrush arms I own just want to get up and live.
In color again.

let it not be confused
let no one else's name
ring throughout these sentences
let this be a hatchet
let me put this to rest
this is not a test
i don't want to think
about shipwrecks anymore
i am tired of folding apologies
into origami birds
and placing them
at the headstones to your tantrums
this is not is not geology class
these are promises
written on razorblades
      & if you are getting choked up
        then maybe you should be
maybe we should be buried
with our telescopes face down
my mouth is full of sorry
all for being honest
we are falling out of orbit
we are burning bystanders
so cast away your callous condolences
because no one is clapping
in this waist deep water
this is not a baptism
so do not tell strangers
that this was a chance to drown
any differently
i am not a catalogue
of constellations you cannot name
this is not mythology
so stop believing your horoscope
i am not a wishing well
i am just a wall for you
to paint post nuclear fallout & antonyms for catharsis on
we destroy the things
that are not ours-
the wanton ways
we embody wrecking *****
and then cry over the rubble
this is not a heap or a mosaic
this is leaping
off a thousand story building
with no one to catch you
at the bottom & maybe
that's why some quiet moments
are so fragile, maybe that's why butterflies have mimicry
your words are black powder
and poetry is your musketry
i guess that makes me your blindfold