in the dead of morning,
i hear car doors slam down the road.
i do not know who drives them,
or why they're so angry,
or why i make it my business at all.
all i know is that,
when i am braver,
and louder,
finally with a license of my own,
i hope nothing else makes me so angry.
i think of you often.
i think of the love you deserved,
the company you kept,
the body that chained you,
and the world that made you hide.
i think of the salvation that came not for you,
the signal you never sent,
the exit you never found,
and the way none of that mattered
to the people
who drank in the hurt they gave you.
i think of how, in another world,
i became you.
when i bit your nails red,
when i drew your blood to cleanse myself,
and when i worked your hands to bone,
you didn't reject me. you didn't leave.
you love the me that hates you,
the me that couldn't even bear the sight of you,
the me that wishes i
could open you like a ripe peach
and crawl out of you
and leave you to rot.
thank you.
I built a love — a small, fickle thing that wafted through my fingers like smoke, not to touch, but to stir around and around.
It was mine in all the ways it never was, the ways it settled in cracks and left ashy trails there.
For it, I built a heart — a shelter nestled behind bars of steel, a place no one else could find.
That love fought endless wars inside my head, until one morning when the cold air hit my throat and I coughed up a smooth white stone.
Love me just a little, so that I will think of you forever.
Touch me so that the pure white ghost of you that lingers on my skin will stay for just a moment.
Haunt me. Make sure I remember.
So, your lost love, too, has traded its identity for the acceptance of the masses.
How cut-and-dry must the human experience be, so that the life of a company can mirror the life of a person?
It's a human desire, to look beyond the white and cold of a corporate monolith to see life, breath, or even identity.
The truth is simple — that any business who'd wish for the undying loyalty, the money of children had already cast off its dreams long ago.
As for your lost love, you hold it close to yourself when you know that it never could have loved you in turn.
But because you were a child, oh, because you were a child, and because the time you had to your small self was so untainted by this monolith that, you muse now,
was always watching from the bushes, the “inner child” you embraced is gone as well.
She is wandering your bedroom, playing with your toys, forever just a step from disillusionment.
You look away from “it”, stationed in the brush behind your window, only to hope that by doing so, you will save "her."