toxic--sunrise

i. to be away is an act of resilience, endless spinning between empty rooms with elation, but they're still empty there's no teakettle laughter in the front room, no too soft furniture and dusty lamps never lit; instead it's a new box of holidays waiting to be filled (but what's there to fill when prices are high, there's only so much that can be paid in full before your heart aches more than it's sown.) ii. it makes sense why she would always snap beans one after another after another, enough to feed the neighborhood and maybe, just maybe, one more than that. there's always a covered dish for the one that's late, the one that's had a

we can stay all buttoned up the girl in the mirror twilight manifestation retained [in] the path of misery but here i am, a darkness greys in my peripheral[s] ripe [&] stuck on burning no light, no light.

i. faith is not what it once was, a solid, creaking metal made fluid; (forced) untold narratives, as if stories were all that could be stolen and draped over young ones still too small to understand more than the gossamer draped around them, a safety blanket, a belief to cling to when all other lights go out. ii. & yesterday, we saw fireflies or fireworks, the way freckles dance on your face in the firelight; sand and salt clung in ways intimate didn't begin to cover and yet and yet and yet (e)motion stilled, frozen in place somewhere between deep winter blizzards and deer caught in headlights. this was an adventure, a story in itself th

i. the nicest thing someone ever said to her came in the form of words she never read; a love letter to an old flame, unopened left to yellow far from the light. she'll open it one day, maybe when there's rain - but the rains never seem to come and it's barren, a crackled exoskeleton shed and left to rot; you can only spend so much time drinking whiskey from silver cups before it's all tarnished and tannins melting your tongue in the wrong ways (instead of, say, loosening your will to be a tightly bound book with all your secrets hidden, but then two completely different things can go hand in hand and she never notices the silvered w

it starts to feel an awful lot  like you’re staring at the dead in reflective surfaces  and the glances of strangers with more feelings and less knowing what do you say when it looks too familiar;  so familiar it aches and splits like an over-ripe fruit in the sun skin peeling back to show  everything best left hidden