[secretviolets]

Cocooned under a landslide

Suffocating on time

A stagnated metamorphosis

Choked by design

It’s an empty tank in there

It’s a melted husk

[secretviolets]

There is an entire world out there, but I only wish for a room with you. We can dance and cry if you want. We can scream our throats raw and I will make you tea with honey and then we can scream more. You can lay the ugliest parts of yourself under the harshest light and I will guard them tenderly. You can sign your worse fears over to me. I will toss and turn at night for you. We are two overgrown gardens with no choice but for our vines to climb over the separating hedges and stretch out over one another until gardens become wilderness.

[secretviolets]

I am not strong

I wish to be a sunbeam

Filtered down through green canopies

Bathing a spot of pavement in light

I hope someone will walk through my warmth

Turn their soft faces up to the light

Feed me with their smile

Drink in their laugh

And fade into cold shadow

I will not wish for more

I am not strong

[secretviolets]

[secretviolets]

I’m drowning

It’s my own fault

Do not follow me in

Do not waste a hero

Do not save me

If I wash ashore, fill my pockets with rocks and send me back into the waves

Let the ocean feast on my body until it is nothing but bits of calcium in a sea bed

Do not save me

[secretviolets]

What do you do with all the rage? Where do you put it? If I could carve it out of my chest, would I float to the cosmos? Would you anchor me to the earth with the weight of your rage? Would you cut it out of your heart and release us both? What would its absence even feel like? Hollow or light?

[secretviolets]

I wonder about you and

hope desperately

that you wonder about me

[secretviolets]

The sun is a weary god on their way home. I breathe so long as they are too tired to swat at the gnats swirling around their celestial body, a perfect halo of life and death and neither

[secretviolets]

I could bury myself in regrets and lie in misery forever. I could bleed my spirit dry; I’d use your pity as a razor.

[secretviolets]

Gentleness has been leeched from my neglected body, a wasted form that tosses and turns after midnight and limps along in the harsh daylight

[secretviolets]

Mornings sink into nights and nights slip into mornings in such rapid succession that my entire existence has started to feel like a flickering zoetrope. One endless motion, chasing nowhere.

[secretviolets]

The world will do what it does and I cannot stand in its way, but I will not do its worst bidding. The ground will not shake beneath my feet; no small spirits will cower from me. I will not plant cruelty where none was yet sown. There is still innocence in me that I preserve.

[secretviolets]

When the barbarians came and everyone shut their eyes, there was nothing left but to feast on the final kernels of excess

[secretviolets]

A child of winter, I go cold when devastated and hibernate until I can feel warmth again. Years pass sometimes. There is nothing to do but move on once the ice thaws.

[secretviolets]

My mind is off center and my heart sticks in my throat. My spirit has turned brittle and bites fiercely with its hand out

[secretviolets]

If grief could paint a picture, I could bring you back to life.

If death could send me home, I’d be in your arms tonight.

[secretviolets]

You came in with the cold and went out with the pollen. I’ve got a lighter in my pocket with your initials on it…I still use it, but the letters mean nothing.