I've come to fear the hours of 7 to 9,

as they bring with them gray and mournful moments.

They bring longing and foggy loneliness

from outside, most days.

 

When sharpened fingernails dig black holes
in our wallpaper, dotted with white paint

(and flowers that only grow in my mind),

and when lilac lines on my skin want to appear to show you

how much I need you

(to look at me),

and my skin wants to break

and it doesn't fucking fit my bones

(stretched too thin, like wax paper ready to tear),

because your arms around me

are the only things keeping me together,

I'll sing.

 

The blinds frame a window looking out on a

sun falling from the sky

to awaken another part of the world,

where the trees

and the clocks

are crying.

 

The blind birds sing,

too loudly,

to one another for attention:

that sweet, sickening need

albeit necessary for near-perfect purpose.

 

A chair,

once holding promises, prosperity

and talking—

just talking—

once heard your voice resonate from across the room, like I did.

 

But now you're so far

(from me)

and I can't even see the shape of how you looked when you were there.

 

A block for where I am,

because I am a lit gas tank on E.

I am a shitty, tired shell on the concrete,

long since uninhabited.

 

"Instead of cutting yourself, take a rubber band

and wrap it around your wrist.

Snapping this against your skin can relieve some temptation,

as it can be very painful,”

says the Help Book my therapist gave me years ago.

snap. snap-snap.

(It doesn't feel like enough, it never will).

"That's not the point," I say, angry again.

"The point was never to hurt, that's why I am always surprised when it does.

The point was never to bleed,

just to leave a scar mommy could see."

 

No—the point

was to beat the blind birds

at their game of getting.

 

My face turns, skin-tight,

and I have nothing left to breathe.

 

A window was hanged in the wall

(with flowers inside that only grow in my mind),

where you and I are still connected;

I can see the lilacs over there, is their grass greener?

I can't see over the wall of plastic you've built between us

to keep you safe.

 

It looks bright over there.

Can you let me sit in the sunshine with you

(if only just to warm my setting skin)?

 

Finally, outside my window,

I blink away the gray god of the sky

let me die

let me die

with the fading breath

of a falling sun.