You don't give me butterflies
In my stomach
Fluttering and attempting to flit up my throat and into the air.
You've taken the darkest parts of me
And planted a garden of sunflowers
That grow more with each smile you give me.
The butterflies come on their own, now.

I have glass wings
But I want to fly
I sit on a shelf
Too delicate to exist
And watch the world move
I know
I know so well
That taking a leap
Would break my wings
But if I can't fly
I want to walk.

I hate myself
I want to die
I can't draw
It's 10 PM
This is all I know about myself.

We promised we'd stay forever young
Not gray our hair or hold our tongue
We promised that our time would tell
A story good, and written well.
Now faces come and faces go
I've never yours forgotten, though.
I wonder, now, if you kept yours
The promise that I gave for hours.
I want to meet you soon,and just see you
And see if you have kept to it true.
Our paths, they haven't crossed in long
I fear that we both did wrong..
In hoping things wouldn't change.
You will always in my heart be strange.
Strange and perfect and lovely
And young as the days and nights
Strange and perfect and lovely.
And for an old man like me feel fright.
When we meet I'm sure to say
"You haven't changed a day."
You, of course, will then reply
"You have, I wonder why?"

I put a bottle by my bedside
Before I went to sleep
To replace the liquid lost
From the times I weep
I closed my eyes to rest
And it was suddenly very near.
So I thought I'd climb inside
And wait to disappear.
I settled at the bottom
And waited for some sap
To come and fill the bottle
With water from the tap.
All the time that this was happ'ning
I was sleeping very well.
Having thought my fate was sealed.
And dreaming I was in hell.

"I hate myself.
I'm so ******* worthless."
You know when you think something so much that it becomes a mantra?
You memorize each letter and you write it out a thousand times in your mind and you whisper it to yourself while you fall asleep?
You think it so many times that every time you close your eyes the words are there, painted on the backs of your eyelids and you can't ignore them at all?
Every breath in feels like preparation to say it over again and reply to the not-question posed by the universe at large over what your mantra is and you just know the answer no matter what?
Every thought loops back around to the words swimming in your head to the point you're wondering how you could have started in this world speaking anything else?
You bite your tongue and the blood tastes like those words and you just want to paint them on your skin to show the world your perfect mantra, the words that have forever been with you, that you never doubted once?
My mantra is a bad one.
I've been told, I'm not allowed to feel that way.
I have to love myself.
I have worth.
Even thinking those phrases makes my head hurt.
My mantra doesn't quell the spreading hollowness in my chest or quiet the white-noise of regret and hatred in my head.
But it doesn't make my demons angry, like the ones people force on me.
My mantra reminds me how to deal with the hollow void in my soul that tries and tries to swallow up my body and crush away everything else and leave a black hole in my place.
It tells me that with just a slim line, just a smooth slice to the wrist, I can stave off the void.
With just a small burn I can beat away the demons telling me lies.
I can convince myself to eat.
I can force my lungs to work.
I can make myself live, if I remember my mantra.
There are people who need me, broken though I am.
And I can't just let the void consume me, even if I should.
Even if its better to have this churlish waste of space
This disgusting, grating, barbarous, surly, persnickety, talentless, slow, moronic, lying, cheating scoundrel of a self wither away into nothing.
Even then.
I need to keep going.
I'm needed.

I wish it was easy
Love and stuff
Saying 'I love you' without fear
Its so strange to think about.
I love you is like a loaded phrase
Don't you dare say it too soon
Too loud
Too young
Too close.
Like a gun.
Aimed for your head.
Aimed for your heart, too.
A pistol with three chambers loaded
I
Love
You
Each a separate shot.
First in the throat, and you lose your voice while you wait
On baited breath for the rest of what they'll say.
Then the stomach, when the meaning of that word is suddenly
Printed in bold-face type on the backs of your eyelids.
And finally, your heart.
When you hear the last word, and you get a sweet, bitter ache in your heart
Because they love
You.
You, with all your flaws and cracks and fears bared to them
You, with every anxiety and heartbreak you put them through daily
You, who couldn't
Shouldn't, would never
Deserve to be loved.
But they say it, and the truth just hits you.
So hard, it hurts.
It feels good.
Why you?
Why them?
...Why not?