Damned If You Do

It drips and splatters over her forearms. Crusting along each delicate finger joint and congealing where it packed into the curve of each cuticle. Painting her skin gray like the dust of age and time.

It drips onto her shoes and stains the hem of her shirt. It falls in spinning splatters to soak the denim of her jeans in thick drops.

In this mess, she gives birth to something new. There, by the potter's wheel.

Hurt like you

There's something about sea salt and brine and the way it sits behind your eyes.

Bright and blue and full of sorrow.

I know they only romanticize your pain; as if it's some great achievement.

They say they want to hurt like you, not out of ignorance.

Only because they don't want to hurt the way they already do.

The salt it stings and the foam dyes you blue.

But for them it's soft and soothes their burned to hurt the way you do.

No bolder words are ever spoken than from the mouth of a dying man

I have always been small. I have always been little and quiet and unseen. I have always done what I'm supposed to do. I have always been smart and i have always been kind. I have always obeyed.

And where has that brought me? Past the edge of childhood and into an adult's life. But I only know how to speak when spoken to, and to do what I'm told. I have never made a decision for myself that hasn't failed spectacularly.

I cannot work and I cannot drive. Anything else i may do is too expensive. So I do nothing.

All my life I've done nothing; to reduce my burden on my parents. But now I am a burden because I do nothing.

The grass is greener somewhere ahead. But half the time I'm walking backwards.

When worlds collide they do so violently.

Crashing together with a destructive passion.

They set fire to each other and are burnt up in the process.

But what is left in their wake is what we live for.

Always stuck somewhere between too much work and not enough

I can't start until I'm desperate

I can't stop until I'm burnt out

Hyper fixating is all fun and games when you're working on a project or cleaning your house or consuming media or completing a task.

but have you ever hyper fixated on a person? You ever thought about someone night and day. Daydreamed about them. Had conversations in your head with them. Let them consume your every moment until they were the first thing you thought of in the morning and the last thing you thought of at night?

This isn't a cheesy love song this is real life and that shit will make you sick. Make you forget yourself. Make you change yourself. Make you neglect yourself.

They're never gonna be like the version you've cooked up in your head and you deserve to move on.

Stop telling me I have to be pure, to be worth it.

Sometimes I catch myself not breathing.

No air filtering in through my lungs.

My brain fuzzy and slow without it.

My chest still and my shoulders hunched.

Like some subtle subconscious part of me just decided this was it.

Time to give up.