the sun devoured our skins on a tuesday afternoon.

the flowers have outgrown from the cavities inside

our body cells; we stack anger and hate and misery

and whatnot against them, one after another,

and watch them walk like ants lined up on the railing.

sometimes, i want to burn my skin white, wring my

neck, and scrap my swollen flesh with my claws over

and over until the blood has dried from my eyes.

i wrote about it, not killing myself but watching myself

rot away, a couple of hundred times before.

except i can't bring myself to do it. so i sink into the bed

and watch the streaks of light coming in through the cracks 

of the wall, sucking life out of the room; 

a stabbed butterfly on the silver plate for dinner.

mom says there's strength in being soft-hearted,

a certain courage in bowing down, but dad doesn't think so.

he likes to rebel; wild minds, wars, protests. 

though that doesn't make him a sadist, it does make me one.

i hate people, babies, laughter; i hate the way they say

sleep can bring peace when it does nothing but freeze

my body except i can't find a way out of my mind; i hate

the girls that laugh behind me and the ones that take

life as a circus; i hate that i can't hate enough.

patterns of smoke across the mirror,

blood leaking from the sky,

wisps of sadness withering away in the air.

i swallowed sadness with chewing gum today,

it got stuck in the roof of my mouth.

pretty girl, don't you ever stop laughing?

don't you ever want to rip your hair off?

i'm lost in the woods, watching my life in old

film reels in grayscale, the filters burning out.

baby steps, they say. fuck them. 

one step forward, five steps back. another cigar.

a few half-breaths, crumbs of anger, strips of God

in black and white. i walked past the graveyard today.

my mom was resting beneath a bunch of lilacs.

she hates lilacs. but i love them because they remind me

of paper cuts and warm blood dripping down my cheeks.

it's September, and i guess maybe things were

meant to be like this, plain bullshit.

or maybe i'm too tired to continue fighting.