Konjuku

there is an echo of poetry somewhere between my cold bones and psychosis. it sings the names of my nightmares through halls of memory. i lay odd lines scribbled between now and soon, like stacking bricks to build a bridge tomorrow, a suicide note for days not here yet. in turn, these days have not been kind to me. anxiety nests on a swing beneath my ribcage, often reaching a hand up to squeeze my heart. i have little i want to say of which i am confident. lately, i'm unsure of most nights' survival. slowly, i am losing myself. that much is true.

all the broken ceramic asks the same, where do you eat now that you've broken the plates and your home? i'll answer in silent surrender: you will eat with your grandparents, grandma's recipe on old spotless china. i will eat with the broken glass in the same kitchen where your heart bursts into rage. these four walls are my own, a penance. reminder that the broken can only break. with these shaking hands of mine, what could you ever expect of the hurt?

.i shed your skin,    and settle your heart. i am waiting by the shore  on the port from which   you loved me. .ii.   call me circumstance,     call me untimely,       i come to you        to offer my care,         if you'll take it.      hold it fast between        the waves of longing         i call your hands. .iii the tide of your smile  follows no moon but   heartache,     and i wonder what star &#

dickinson writes of hope as a little thing with feathers perched on the soul,   but i've come to see hope as a vine of thorns  and flowers inside my ribcage. it hurts when i breathe, and blooms when i bleed.

I don’t love you, she said when their eyes met and though her words were words of pain she spoke with closure, and with every word she undid his chains; the heart is feeble and weak, and sometimes our compromise is too little. their one-sided love  was hard, harsh, and difficult when he dragged, when he stretched his love to cover her insecurities, and her faults, but you can’t make a lover love; I love you, she said when their eyes met. But I’m not in love, she said before she left, and on her nurse’s scrub she wore the matching pens he bought her, and he understood what he once misunderstood; no gesture, no

she saw the world in tones of sepia; odd, washed out scenes and vignettes as strings of memories; ordinary life made beautiful by the verse with which she wrote about the sun, moon, and starts and every love that had graced her quiet heart and sparked burning passions, heated flames, raging fires that burnt away at the colorlessness of her sepia tinted reality, bleak and stark and beautiful in its ritualistic expression of writing, in her art, and soul. and for him the world was amber , hazel, bright and colors strewn across the cosmos behind the open, windows to the skies that were her eyes. for him, the world was beauty in the filth an

see, my heart is: strings stretched taunt about to break. vocal strings too tight to sing    - &  too tired to scream. I’m a coward. See,   I saw her car driving up to the gas station and my heart started       pounding.   Pounding Hard on my clavicle with immaterial  fists   and    cold,   sharp blades of immaterial anxiety and stress that made me pause and think: “I am a coward.” Let’s just go elsewhere, I begged my friend to leave and we did, while my heart caved in. see, my heart is: strings stretched taunt about to break. vocal strings too tight to sing    - &  too tired to scream. see, my heart

“A snowflake settling on a panda feels no remorse. Random inspiration, or just insanity? Who knows. Maybe both?” A manicured finger tapped against her lips. The rest of her fingers curled beneath her chin, as if cupping her expression and framing in for one particular moment in time; a pause in her daily ramblings. “No, not quite.” On her other hand rests a pencil. Black, thin, fine point; it danced over the sepia toned paper sheets of her thrift store moleskin journal. Behind her, he prepared breakfast. “How do you like your eggs?” He smiled, turning with a spatula in a hand, and two eggs in another.

Don't leave me, she begged with tear stained cheeks, dry lips and an open mouth; pain like crucified-christ nailed on a cross on a wall in an old country house; image, symbol, stigma of suffering written over button nose and dark, onyx eyes: doubt etched on her cheeks as worry lines, like the scars I wore on my wrists, and arms, and knuckles and knees. They're beautiful, she smiled placing the roses in a transparent vase, with water and a drop of clorox. It keeps them pretty, she explained between a sad smile and a giggle, and I smiled as if my positivity would make everything alright, although it couldn't. These too, she confessed looki