Funny

I feel this rabid confusion settling into my brain, holding my breath for anxiety to pass like a kid in a car on a burning bridge. There's always someone there to make sure you're not cheating, sneaking little gasps of air through your nose while you choke on smoke and funnel hate through your irises. We're just along for the ride, right? It's all bullshit, it's all a lie, no matter whether you believe in truth. I've been drinking and dying trying to keep my tongue pushed back into my chest where it belongs. If only I could speak from the sternum, if only I could be as hard and brave and powerful as the bony armor over human hearts.
Funny how the tone in your voice changes. Funny how I shake when I taste the bile of words backing up in my esophagus. Funny how that infallible chest plate can snap with the right amount of force. If only I could recognize the pieces after fracture. Funny how things change.

Blacked-out

This is the only thing left after a week-long bender of swallowing heart and anxiety with a whiskey chaser. There's a shell here, but a shell is a place that used to be a home and I'm not convinced the name fits. The blurred truth I slurred through drunken teeth holds confessions of love and swearing sobriety, hanging like a blanket over my head, pulling my neck this way and that while heat builds with every exhale and loose strings fall in my eyes. This is the first step towards suffocation, the fabric calmly climbing up my neck until it pulls my lips apart with gentle cotton fingers and softly settles at the back of my throat. I'm holding my nose and telling myself it's not the end, I've swallowed sheets and pillows since childhood but I'm afraid there's no space left for oxygen. These are the last few minutes of frantic, and I will revel in the fireworks behind my eyelids. I will revel in blacked-out love.

Fever

I can leave you to yourself
You can keep the parts I left
Like the lingering scent
that you can't quite place
Like a memory that only fades

We all have trouble sleeping
None of us can make it through the night
We all have restless evenings
None of us can keep our eyes
Shut through the night

I can let you live alone
With the fever in your brain
I will cut dependency
Like a cancer from my veins
Like a memory that only fades

Like the image of my face
Through your irises at night
Blends together with the shadows
Oh, the lines around my eyes
Will sink into my skeleton
The lights along this drive
Will illuminate,
and find nothing.

Ocean

My eyes are covered in sand

I fashioned a mask, hardened with sun

that smells of a sickly sweet hangover coast

and shows me a silhouette, dark in the distance 

My eyes are covered in sand. 

My mouth is silenced with strands

You fashioned a needle, cooled with a kiss

threaded your hair in and out of my lips

and left me with meaning trapped under my tongue

My mouth is silenced with strands. 

So,

I captured a bottle of clear ocean water

and swallowed it deep in my chest

it stayed quiet and calm

when removed from its home

but the walls start to ache

from the crashing of waves

and the swelling of salt

and the moments of memory

and the hours of asphalt 

and drinking the sunset

puts salt in my blood. 

I feel the ocean, 

pushing out of my chest,

reaching for you.