colors

Would you like

A peek inside my head

I stare at her

and get mixed up in

all the things she’s said

That rare genuine smile

I want to drink it in

All that sweet venom

Hope she will not consider

all her time spent

A waste

the way her eyes catch 

on something just beyond mine

as though she is already

somewhere I cannot reach

Would you like

to see what I see?

Or would you rather

I keep it to myself?

Golden eye

Yellow sunset

Dandelion

Bee stripe

Desert wind

Grainy dune

Young fire

Goldfinch

Phoenix feather

Flying beneath

the midday sun

The literary wall

Headlights flashing

before you black out

Reading lamp

Five-year journal

Stinging honey

Discarded post-it note

Reading to the blind

Deaf

Dumb

A word pressed between the pages

A thought left under a door

Drowning in marginal spaces

Please succumb to this war

Keep collecting evidence of yourself

in places no one thinks to look

Blood

Life

Hyacinth

Bleeding heart

Mud

Lotus

Venom

Alarm

Chapped lips

Scars

Unverified

Love

Hate

Attempts

Raging fire

Ripe clay

Birth

Death

Something always

growing out of something

already buried

Something beautiful

with its roots

in something rotten

Something poisonous

that still smells sweet

when you lean close enough

When you do not confront your fear head-on

It creeps up behind you

In the guise of your own

Deformed thoughts

A new pattern

Addiction

Coping mechanism

Something to justify today

and then tomorrow

and another

until the thing has learned 

the shape of your life

destroying you slowly

piece by piece

gnawing away at your insides

convincing you

you have no way out

you didn’t choose this

there’s nothing you can do to change

Such a liar

The things we refuse to acknowledge

do not disappear

they ferment

waiting in the dark

with their mouths open

they come back tenfold

screaming in your face

whispering down your throat

scratching at your stomach

eat me alive

spit me back out

Dipping in and out of consciousness

Tingling legs

stabbing

A body becoming unfamiliar

one sensation at a time

the room tilts

the blood rushes somewhere

I cannot follow

I tell myself to breathe

I tell myself this is only a thought

But the thought has teeth

And somewhere beneath all of it

beneath the fear

the wanting

the fire and mud

and blood and honey

Something is still alive

Something refusing

to be swallowed