skin upon skin upon skin

inside-out

It spilled.

It poured from your fingers, and trickled from your palms, and swallowed the air.

It painted the walls and coated our skin.

And you made it sing to all of us. You made it colour us inside.

You fed us a picture you’d seen as you realized it. You sketched it, and shaded it, and made it fit within us.

And from inside out, it swallowed us all. It swallowed us like it always swallows you when you lay your skin upon your catalyst and set yourself outside.

And when asked, you say you shed your skin - turn yourself inside-out - so we may see everything inside for a minute.

So you may be inside us, and guiding.

And this colour, these sounds, these voices, and this light you shed from your eyes, and your lips, and your fingers becomes our blanket.

You use your light to fill up the darkness, but not take it away. It is surrounded, but it is never gone.

Just as a reminder that it can come back. And you manipulate it in shades of grey.

You twist it, and turn it, and bend it around within us until we pull the darkness from around and inside us by ourselves and learn to do as you do.

And slowly, we become extensions of what you know, and what you do, and what you are.

And we begin to paint the walls.

And we show others how to see.

And we imprint it inside their skin as we set ourselves outside of our own.

Lines

I’d never met anyone that liked every line.

I’d never met anyone that traced each one, and called them all beautiful because they sewed me up.

I’d never met anyone that kissed each one with his fingers and lips because they are all me.

I had never, and thought I could never, and thought I would never, but I did.

And he looks at me with his hands, and reminds me what these lines feel like.

And these lines feel like beauty.

These lines, and this skin, and these bones are all beauty.

These lines, and this skin, and these bones are all me.

And I look at me with my eyes, and he looks at me with his, and we see the same.

Sylvia

Sylvia
How she writes
Of the people
In her mind

Oh, Sylvia
She hides
From the people
In her mind

The paper
Sylvia
The paper’s
Where she hides

She burns them
Sylvia
The people
In her mind

She burns me
Sylvia
As I am
In her mind

Oh, Sylvia
How she writes
Of the people
In her mind

Oh, Sylvia
How she hides
From the people
In her mind. 

at my best.

i leaf through shadows of who i knew
i wander backwards into you
you sit heavy inside my chest
and you tell me i am where you rest

i see you, though your shape is glazed
with memories of worlds you only taste
and you tell me that your skin is bothered
with pieces and shards of another

and you
plague me
and i
am weak
at my best

your mind, it speaks to me when you sleep
and your heart beats at me as you breathe
and when your eyes stare blankly ahead
i see the words you say pounding down your neck

and you
plague me
and i
am weak
at my best

you break your skin, i tell you to stop
you turn your hands on me, and i bleed to the touch

and you
plague me
and i
am weak
at my best 

Insecure

At the end of the day, all I’m looking for is the chance to look myself in the eye and be able to take all of what I’ve done in my life and be alright with it.

I look at my life, and I separate everything based on failures, successes, embarrassments, and lessons, all in hopes of being able to look at my reflection before I end each day and say, “I’m a good person. I accept everything I am and everything I’ve done.”

But not every night is the easiest to own up to.

It’s not every night that you can look into your own eyes and truly be happy with who you are.

And this is not about what you are physically. This is not about your lips, your eyes, your nose.

This is about looking at everything you’ve ever been and everything you are at that distinct moment as a person and being comfortable with your actions, your thoughts, and yourself.

This is about having self-security.

But we all have insecurities.

We can all think back to moments that, in reflection, are less than perfect.

You don’t have to be proud of every word you’ve ever spoken, or every move you’ve ever made.

This is about taking those moments, and accepting them.

Reminding yourself that you are radiant for your errors.

And some nights are just harder than others.

You seem to relive those moments, and accepting who you were at that point in your life becomes impossible.

Or at least, that’s how it feels.

Tonight, I know when I look in the mirror to see who I am now, and see the shadows in my eyes of who I was before, I will see how I’ve changed.

I will not be happy with certain moments. I may not even be happy with who I am now.

And I know that resolution is all I want. I just want to be able to take everything I’ve done — and will do — and accept it.

And I know that won’t happen.

And I know I will feel pathetic for it.

I will feel pathetic not for having done what I have done, or for being who I am, but because I cannot find security within myself, even now.

I will degrade myself for finding that self-security is not permanent.

And then I will sleep with the limbs of my insecurities scratching against the insides of my eyes.

Delusion

You focus on the cuts.

On the bruises, the scrapes, and the blisters.

Opportunity comes and goes, and you are still left there — whether you take it or not — counting up all the wounds. Making sure there’s enough salt.

And you don’t want to change. You want to smolder; to burn, to waste.

To continue to become unusable.

You sit there in a corner and you yearn. You ask, and you plead, and you want, and you say everything you want is really just all you need.

You break everything else down for what you tell yourself you need.

And then you wait. You wait for something to fall into your lap because you have nothing. You’ve sacrificed yourself for what you think you need.

And it comes along, one day, after you’ve given up, and convinced yourself you can go without.

It falls right into your lap, and then you wake up from this period of “needing” to realize it means nothing.

It’s quite jarring, really — like waking up a sleepwalker.

You’ve been set to “auto” and have had one goal for as long as you can remember.

And you’ve pushed, and prodded, and ripped for it.

And now you realize it’s nothing. Nothing at all. It could be a grain of salt compared to what you’ve convinced yourself you need now.

And throughout this psychotic cycle, all you can focus on is the way those cuts burn.

You knead in that salt every time you go to sleep, and then you wonder why the wounds burn.

You think you can walk it off by “needing” something, but it’s nothing but a crude attempt that brings you closer to the broken skin you’ll never let heal.

And something inside will tell you to keep rubbing the salt in; to keep scratching.

Etching in the memories of what you’ve “needed”.

And it will never stop.

You’ll live in your own secret world of want, and you’ll keep breaking off little bits of yourself to gorge.

And nothing will stop you from ending yourself.

Finally one day, you go to sleep for good. The kind of sleep you can’t walk in.

You return the salt to the sea, for someone else to use.