I remember how my fingers could stretch wide, wide, wide across the ocean. I’d trace the outlines of my old apartment and rejoice at the feeling of not missing it at all. My hands have grown small since. I can’t touch the other side of the sea, I can’t touch the other side of this state. I force myself to outline my own body, in case it disappears. I wish it’d disappear. I cut my nails short to make sure I won’t scrap it. Maybe I can return it. Maybe I can return me. Untie, unravel, undo all the years that made me small, that made me weak. I wish I hadn’t cried an ocean, I feel seasick. Nauseous, and jealous, jealous, jealous of my brother’s piano hands, that can reach across sea to pull people closer. I can’t keep people near me. I grow my nails long to make sure I can scrap my body. Maybe I can destroy it. Maybe I can destroy me. Tear down, smash down, throw up this town, this state, the sea. See how loud I can scream across the ocean. Swear I’m not missing much at all. Fall asleep.

But before I know it,
it’s four in the morning again,
I’m small again, I’m dazed again,
I’m lost again,
I can’t tell left from right
or loss from gain,
I’m just toying with them,
I’m just toying with pain
and, and, and,
if I’m broken again,
don’t let this be in vain.

Feel it.

How cold the room suddenly gets; you haven’t noticed the drop in temperature, the slow decline of the sun in the sky, the thick darkness that has taken over the room, the minutes, hours, days that really just passed you by when you weren’t looking – you haven’t looked in what feels equally like seconds and years. Surely, the clock must be lying. There’s a glitch somewhere.
How hollow your bones are; so hollow that every accidental blow echoes like a symphony, carried out through weakened muscles that fail to drag you out of bed in the morning. So fragile that you can hear them snap and come together again with every step; they crumble in your nightmares while your skin rips at the seams and all the light, all the power, all the life finally comes rushing out.
How numb your mind is, slurring words and ideas in weakly linked fragments. So numb that everything is drenched in confusion, misunderstanding. You feel yourself drifting from the things you love to think of most, and suddenly, it’s pitch black, or a bright blinding light or yet another unspoken shade of chaos – nothing gets through.
How easily everything slips out of your fingers, out of your sight – down into the shallow curves of your heart, there’s still something to hold on to, but your hands are too numb, the motions rough. You let it fall away like everything else. You comfort yourself in this padded room of a silence, this warm fog that swings you to sleep. This is why your muscles are sore, this is why your tongue sits uncomfortably in your mouth – it’s all that fighting, that struggling. You let go. You watch yourself fall, over and over, from the greatest heights you’ve ever known, and you can’t even feel the pit in your stomach when the darkness swallows you. You haven’t felt a thing today. It’s like you’ve never, ever felt – until something gets through.

How cold the room suddenly gets.

There’s something vile in the air now. So heavy, so dense that it sticks to your skin. It melts you down. You feel your walls crumbling at the touch, any touch – a stranger’s hand pressing against your back to push you out of the way, a friend’s fingers crawling across your face because they need to make sure you’re here (you’re not). You can taste how lonely everyone is under the shadows – so few, so small, so crowded. We’re all gasping for the same air, but we swear we don’t want the same things. We’re so different under the similar structure of atoms that built our skin. So different and so lonely and so weak under the scalding sun.
Vile, I tell you. Vile.

I don’t know. I’m crawling out of my skin, I can’t seem to rest. I’m really, really tired; the kind of exhaustion no amount of sleep, no amount of coffee, no amount of care is going to fix. A shade I’ve never seen in my own eyes, but I’m not keen on the mirror lately. Don’t let me see what I could see. Here’s to a weight I can’t carry, on shoulders a thousand times too frail, and yet… I never said I would be strong, but I swore they wouldn’t see me weak, so, it goes. The weight carries itself while each of my footsteps drags me down further into the ground; a path all the way down to a hell that’s been crafted in my honor. A perfect fit.

You’re just a boy, you know? A little boy, shaking with the sullen anger that children have. Like it’s all against one, all against you; the unfair load of a world who breaks your back, but this is our burden. The one you don’t carry. Just a boy, while we die to make our mark; bare hands, fingers raw, blood upon a door that remains locked. And you can’t stop, you’re deep into your tantrum; it’s always, always, always someone else’s fault, but you’ve done things that you can’t fix. You’re just a boy. And the things you give can’t soothe us, because your conscience isn’t ours to ease.

Guilty as charged.
I came here to burn down what was left.
I came here to make you see everything.
This is everything you’ve destroyed.
This is the pain, the coldness, the fear
The emptiness, the rage, the sadness,
The restlessness, the recklessness,
The darkness you’ve created.
This is the never ending night
That you cast with your shadow.
Upon me and them and us all.
Everything’s on fire and I can’t lay down to rest.

It just gets harder.

Static.

I’m just a pillar of salt in this commotion.
Forget me. I’m just a casualty. I’m no one.
I’m lost in the static. I don’t translate.
I’m screaming from inside your TV set,
But the sound never even leaves.
I’m trapped in my own lungs. Drowning.
Drowning in the oxygen I’ve created.
Drowning in the blood I’ve invented.
I’m everything. I create myself.
It doesn’t matter if the sun sets
Over the sky that I had, once;
I scared it away. I scare everyone away.
Forget me. I’m white noise. Nonsense.
I’m an inkblot and you see me all wrong.
You don’t even hear me at all.
My heartbeat is too low,
And the streets too loud –
It doesn’t even hurt you one bit
To see I’ve disappeared.