wish for windows + summer bluez

horrible again. working until i can't think anymore. until my feet ache. until i don't know what it's like to not feel tired anymore. until i can't remember why i did this to myself in the first place. until the stench of black coffee seeps into my pores and pours out into my sweat. sweat. still be it sweeter than the shivers i feel when i come back again to this freakish anti-hell hell in the winter. i love you and i wished for you, ALL of you, every single one of you and now i have you and all i can wonder is what if... what if i could have all of you but none of this ... what if i could fold you all up like origami and tuck you gingerly into my right pocket, keeping one hand on you at all times just in case as we drive back home? even though we are home? and i know you all love it here? could i do that to you? could i cage you? could i put you on display for mine own pleasure? could i turn you into the polar bear in california, bumping its perfect white head against the glass until it bleeds? am i doing it to you already? did i not wish for this? i couldn't do it, i don't think. than again i don't think much these days. its too damn hot in this disaster town.

anyways this is a poem i wrote this time last year fresh out of the mental hospital. it is BAD bc i was angry so its very blunt and also horrible but ima post it anyways bc well. i can. welcome home, soldier! don't forget to leave ur gun and ur tags on the desk when you get the fucking balls to leave.

Wish for Windows

I flinch now when I hear sirens.

No one talks about how cold the stretcher is,

How they swaddle and strap you in blankets like a child

But instead of feeling coddled, comforted,

Snug safe in a mother’s embrace,

You feel more posed, more crystalline,

Trapped in her stone-frozen grip of death

While still, you breathe.

I have known it all along:

Known that they can not save the cut-off part of you,

Known that they can only replace so much lost blood

Before the oil sliding through your veins

Pumps the pistons, but, foreign, it corrodes the metal.

Coming home from the wizard with a changed heart

Has proven more lonely than the golden journey, it seems.

I stare at things I didn’t notice before.

My water glass shifts beautifully in the light,

Forming rainbows prismatic and sterile,

Sterile. The word itself feels metallic…blank,

As it drips steadily from my mouth

And hangs off the ends of my sentences like bleached bedsheets.

My ceiling has paint splatters. My mother rarely smiles.

I burn myself alive in the bathroom, but not even the heat

Can kill the sickness seeping through my sweat.

I found myself at the beach six days ago,

Ebbing and flowing saintly against the shore.

Oh, yes, I thought. I remember now.

I was here, too, a very long time ago. 

Every empty crab shell reminded me I couldn’t go back.

If I wanted to be the big bang again, 

I just needed a sunrise, to hug a friend,

To break bread with another, laugh with a stranger,

But I thought I needed to bleed instead.

And yet, so little healing settles in the aftermath.

My bed holds the imprints of my nightmares

And my carpet, the footprints of a thousand miles trekked 

Through the warzone of my head towards the end

Only to find my curtains, drawn in their endless night,

Before the circles worn ineffaceable into the ground

That I followed like a map.

Was I learning to swim? Was I?

Endure, kid, endure. “You haven’t seen nothing yet.”

Nevermind your scars. Stare into the Sun.

Love the light beyond when it blinds you.

Didn’t you wish for windows in the hospital?

Perhaps we are only by design, biding time, 

Until we fall off our pikes and roll into ditches

After our stitches finally unravel under our weight.

∾