pain

Your Pain Isn’t Beautiful

Your pain isn’t beautiful.

It’s a cankerous sore that

demands to be felt

that opens old wounds

and litters new dreams

until your only focus becomes

the suffocating pain

that consumes your being.

Your pain is toxic.

Your pain is a deadly cancer

and romanticizing your sadness

will never make it go

away.

I constantly reopen old wounds
hoping that maybe they won’t hurt as much this time
hoping that maybe I really have moved on
but perhaps I’ll never “move on”
as much as become accustomed to it
too well acquainted with the cuts you
left on me
too familiar with this painful
instability
to ever let them fully heal

Inconsistency

It comes in bursts,
like the rising and falling
of a fickle storm
with no end or
destination,
and like a storm
It is wet and violent,
treacherous to
those nearby
and beautiful to those
who watch from
their windows,
blissful and far removed.
Sometimes I seek comfort
in the storm;
in the rage, the tears,
the spiraling thoughts
and emptiness I do not
wish to feel, yet
it is all I have ever
felt. And we all
cling to the familiar.

Another Stomach Ache

There is a disease that has consumed me
A disease some might call love
Others, infatuation
Yet this foolishness
This gambling of emotions
Is only ever temporary
Soul mate is a rather nonsensical term
And all you ever did for me
Was make my stomach ache

It could only ever be you

And of course it was you I dreamt of
when my hands were tired
and my face went numb
and nothing at all seemed to matter
to the hopeless eyes
that watched the light slowly fade
and trickle into darkness.

It could only ever be you
that my thoughts drifted to
and grasped too tightly,
too firmly,
that even the darkness began
to resemble light
and the blade felt too much like your hand
to notice the difference between
blood and sweat
and what it feels like to be dying
or simply falling asleep

This is starting to hurt too much

My heart is aching
And you have no idea
You have no idea
How many times I wished I was drunk
How many times I cried myself into an icy stupor
In order to avoid feeling the great amount of pain that I do
And I know you are finding yourself
As you should
But you have taken a piece of myself with you
And I would like to have it back
I would like to have you back in my arms
Caressing my face and telling me that everything will be okay
As I have always told you

Sometimes

And sometimes it still hurts.
Sometimes I still feel the lingering sting of it all,
a memory long gone, slowly fading, but still within sight.
And sometimes I have nightmares about you
that give me shivers and cold sweats,
the image of your screaming face still imprinted in my mind.
But you were poison oak and my skin was much too fragile
to make it out unscathed.
And sometimes I can still feel the bruises you left behind,
jamming my fingers into them,
as they weep like tiny stab wounds.
And I am left here,
still trying to wipe your name from my tongue,
and oh how bitter it tastes.

Still Standing

Don’t cry for me
I cry enough for myself every day
And the tears I shed
Burn like acid as they
Stream down my cheeks
But my heart still beats
And my lungs still breathe
And I am still standing

Worth It

Sometimes caring can be dangerous

A treacherous minefield full of broken hearts

That never seems to have an escape route

A gut-wrenching calamity of an inner struggle

That consumes your entire being

Until you are engulfed in agony

But perhaps it is better to hurt than to feel nothing at all

Perhaps it is only beneficial to take great risks and gamble with your heart

In order to find the one thing that everyone spends their whole lives searching for:

Love.

Sunscreen

And when I think of you
I think of morning doves
Singing ballads in the a.m.
Soaring high above the treetops
On the street where you live

I think of you and I see cloudy skies
Dulled and gray and dismal
Warning me that there is rain to come

I think of you and I hear the bomb tick
Slowly and then faster
As I await the explosion of time
But the sun always made the burns worth it
It’s warm rays somewhat comforting

And when I think of you
I think of sunscreen