xxxcringexxx

i talked with my fists instead of teeth and tongue, pounding out sentences to the rhythm of war drums. there was so much to say but i didn’t have words and my body spoke in the only language it knew. i pulled vowels from under my nails and let them spell out starvation on your cheekbones. the punch of knuckles against your breastbone begged for anything that would make me feel alive again. i’m breaking bones to the beat of Morse code. my skin’s collected palm-shaped bruises like old houses collect ghost stories; i wore purple and yellow stains like exotic body paint, lingering in the dip between my ribs, branded in the holl

i spent so much time telling myself i didn’t care, by the time i realized i should, i couldn’t. i tried so hard to forget everything else that i think i accidentally deleted important things, too. i wish i could remember what i’ve forgotten, like the shape of your teeth when you talked, or what your fingernails looked like. i don’t remember how it felt to have you slide into my life, leaving socks under the love seat and letting your cups pile up in the sink, but i remember how it felt when you left. i’m pretty sure i tried. yeah. at least i tried.

sometimes i think that people go looking for sadness so they have something to write about. mixing pop rocks and coke isn’t the worst thing for me anymore, and i’ve found out that climbing trees isn’t the only way to get high. (0,0) isn’t my point of origin. sometimes smoke gets caught up in all the sad things in my lungs and never wants to leave. it hurts, and i think the same about you. bourbon would have gone down smoother than what you were feeding me. i still choke on everything you left behind. you never had a childhood. i hope you enjoy mine.

i was so lonely, and you so broken (not much has changed). i suppose there was something painfully awkward about the pair of us, speech stuck in the scars of our throats and knocking in the knobs of our knees. our youth had forgotten how to not be cruel to us and i know we’ll never be what we could have been. as bad as we considered ourselves, we were always quick to point out someone worse. i don’t think we ever hated others. i think that we gave them the hate we held for ourselves.

give me something that’s gonna hurt. show me how to work Newton’s Laws on the receiving end of a fist. keep me in motion. there has to be an equation for a black eye. i’m sure you thought of it. test it on me. don’t leave me wondering why the Earth is always beating us up. make me feel again. show me how i can make rivers of my own and mountains where ice once ruled. beat me and bruise me in every way you can think of. it will teach me how to build myself stronger.

i think it didn't work out because i didn't expect it to. we had to be broken before we could be built, but you can't break what you can't touch. you were never meant to be an architect and i only have so many hands.

maybe you couldn’t understand what i meant because i spend all my time talking to houses. sun-faded cherry floorboards never wondered what it felt like to be trees, and i couldn’t help you when you asked me why you creaked when people stepped all over you. ghosts make my house moan for my attention when i'm alone, and i wish i could have told you that your insecurity haunts you in similar ways. i wanted to show you how to speak the language of the dead when old houses draw your attention to their aching bones. i can craft support beams from your spinal column and mend broken ribs with nail guns until you can’t be shaken,

I am the Architect of languorous days spent trying to curve your bones into constellations when we both know that the harsh jut of your hipbones and the sweeping of your brittle wrists were more sun-bleached than space bound. I know all 206 parts of you and can name them all - I’ve named every bone within you, replaced metacarpals with finesse, and the harsh bite of your fingers with wonder, passion, and wraith. Your sternum is embedded with pride. I am the Architect of righteous anger; I popped yellow dwarves like narcotics and they rolled around my stomach like loose marbles, condensing in the skin under the crease of my wrists so th

you were born too young to feel this old. the unorthodox bend of your limbs came out looking like an unfinished question mark; the slats of your rib cage brought to mind seashells and i wonder if you know that you can hear the ocean in your lungs. laughter rose in you like a mid-June tide to soften the glass stuck through your throat until your words popped out as pebbles. there are fireflies at home in your veins and willows hanging from your shoulder sockets. i wonder if you took a leaf from the page of Athena, exploding your way into existence with every intention of leaving your mark, or if you went along more subtly as Artemis. how l

i’m fading like the black minority standing, crying out, “I HAVE A DREAM!” -- i am the East German nobody, taking heart and feeling energy flood my veins listening to the echos of “Ich bin ein Berliner!” change the flow of history before my very being. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!” moving me to action, shattering barriers, moving purple mountain majesties above every kind of plain. webs of time vibrating with the force of one million turned into one, living - breathing - revolution. you undermine me, goose bumps rising on my skin watching twin monuments topple in a blaze of smoke