rust

she wipes the dust from her
wood shelf heart, old
books and ornaments that
speak in tears and shatters

an aged journal, broken
leather that smiles in creases
tender sheets that know the
weight of soul and pen

she ruffles its pages--
smelt of earth and sadness--
tracing her fingers over
words of ink. she finds a
pin-pricked paper vein
a painful nothing, disappearing
within the folds of diaries

a lyrical abyss upon a
blank page, she hears
herself within the spaces
within an emptiness

"am i alone
and shall i always be alone?"

she twists her lungs in
knots, clenching hope as if to
suffocate it. she strangles,
stranded in a fugue of
ghostly voices--choke, smother, fight.
spirit-stifled, she waits to
exhale, but breath suspended
cannot sing

away.

threaded insides full of
paper shreds and
unfinished sentences
uninspired ink blots like
blood, my veins are
dull as white painted walls
i bite my lip and
taste a bitter something
sour, something sad
the light flutters coldly
eyes vain as whirlpools
empty as static
shallow as my lungs



silence.


thick knotted sadness
abandoned places
crumbling houses
inwardly drooping, a
flower wilting was my spirit

i am nothing
will i ever be anything?
will i [n]ever be anything?

melt like discarded snowcones
in the ground, unpretty
hearts that don't mean anything

alone in a well-lit room
it eats me up from the insides