grey.

"No one will love you with those demons in your head."

the ballad of the stars.

One day, I sat on the moon, floating high above the clouds, as the stars sang sweet-nothings to me. Their prose reminded me of a sweet siren melody, and I found myself begging to stay amongst them.

The moon himself spoke to me in strange tongues, but by my account, I understood him perfectly.

After-all, he had been my muse for far longer than any other. There was just something wholly thrilling about my feet dangling into space, where no one could tell me to come back to Earth.

Before I could get too comfortable, however, the stars began singing twisted ballads in the same strange tongue as the moon - ballads of the deepest pain and betrayal - and I found myself fighting for an escape.

The feeling of weightlessness left my body; suddenly it was as if an anchor was pressing my legs into the craters on the surface of the moon- I was petrified.

The only sound resonating inside me was that of the horrid tales the stars regaled; they were all consuming.

Until suddenly, the weight became impenetrable, burying me dozens of feet beneath the surface. And everything went dark.

Miraculously - or maybe it was some perverted joke - I could still hear the faintest whisper in the darkness.

He told me I was welcome if I wished to join him; I wont lie and say I didn't think it through for some time.

In reality, I must have laid in that crater for mere moments, listening to the deep baritone of the moon and the soprano voices of the stars, but to me it was an eternity.

Eventually, I discerned I had but two options:

Lie there, and waste away to nothing amongst the siren calls and the hushed whispers;

Or get up, dig if I had to, and fight my way back to Earth.

As I contemplated simply letting the darkness consume me, through the shroud of black that filled the void, I felt a hand reach out for mine.

It was warm, familiar.

It was calloused in a way that showed the test of time and perseverance of the owner; much like me, I supposed.

Without so much as a warning, the hand folded itself around mine and yanked me to my feet.

I found myself gently being led back to Earth.

Only this wasn't the Earth I was accustomed to.

Gone were the trees; gone was the sun.

I found myself to be trapped, still clouded by the darkness, but the hand continued to lead me forward.

We trudged through the shadows, where I found myself becoming more and more hopeless as time went on.

The haunting songs of the stars followed me the deeper we went into the nothingness; it was as if they had left a permanent tattoo on my psyche.

I can't tell you the moment it happened; I can't even tell you who let go first.

It happened so gradually that when the last fingers released from my shaking hand, I barely took notice.

Barely.

When the hand that was my anchor, keeping my feet planted firmly in the wasteland I called my home, retreated, there was little - if not nothing - left to keep me from floating again.

It would require strength and determination to remain mindful of my surroundings; strength in which I couldn't be sure I had.

Before I knew it, however, the sun peeked through the shroud of fog, dandelions began peeking through the rubble, water began trickling through long-forgotten streams - and I found my ability to breathe.

All-the-while the stars continued to sing their sweet-nothings to me.

honey.

I want to stare into eyes of green

For nothing short of

An eternity

Listening to his melodic voice

Deep

Soothing

With a drawl that reminds me

Pennsylvania isn't home

I want to hear how my name

Drips from his lips

Like honey

Melting into my ears

Tiny droplets of gold

That I cling to

I want to feel those lips

Pressed to me

In places

I've imagined for so long

Melting against my skin

Never to let go

purple wilted flowers.

There's purple wilted flowers in a broken vase

The glass was shattered in a drunken haze

It's just past a week since my quarter-century birthday

And I wonder- how much more can I take?

She's got eyes as green as the stems no longer in bloom

Coconut in her hair - it's her own personal perfume

When she smiles at him, it reeks of doom

For our love is fading, there's nothing left to be exhumed

She dances against him, and I become temperamental

My whole body aches, as I begin to tremble

The angler bubbles- I begin to crumble

And I start to wonder - is it true, or am I really mental?

Oh, he left me today for the girl with coconut hair

He says it was me, but I know of the affair

With nothing left for us to repair

How quickly this dream has become a nightmare

Those purple wilted flowers in my broken vase

Shattered like the organ in my chest did in February

Now there's nothing left for me to say

And I wonder - was it actually me?

my truths.

I like pungent lilacs picked to perfection in pretty vases

Sitting on my coffee table

That bloom after the rains of May

While the scent of them arouses every one of my senses

And the lavender-colored blooms catch my eye

I stop to wonder if my heart and mind will ever suffice

To him

I need stability in a world that's gone mad

Someone to comfort me on nights my mind plays torment to my aching, heavy soul

But there's this war inside our heads

And it fills us to the brim

We can no longer fulfill our roles

Forever searching for a fragment of care-free sanity

Within a mind that tells me it's an unattainable dream

And the ones in his life push me to the brink of true insanity

What's left, but for me to scream?

Lost in this world where the lilac's bloom

And sanity is lost

And a mental war consumes-

I know he's exhausted

While I sit here alone

What's left of this life

I wonder

I cry.

surrender.

Surrendering myself to the fact he is nothing, if not full of a detrimental poison

As the fog clouds over the entirety of my shattered soul

My heart, ripped open in the sharpest of pieces, and iced over

Frozen

As I lose all sense of rationality and self-control

A year has passed as I wonder still if I'll survive

This turmoil brought upon us by happenstance

While I know, in this moment, that I'm still alive

As this poison brings with it an avalanche

Tumbling down a never-ending mountain of emotions

Where I am full of sorrow and misery

I find myself exploding

In this world where we're just history

As I cry out for someone to save me

While this poison chokes the life from my battered lungs

No one comes as the poison slowly closes my airway

His name is the last on my weary tongue

let them leave

if they cannot see

the beauty

that is your soul

him.

Staring down the end of an endless black barrel

While the fear stretches its way into every crevice of her soul

She knows just by the pupil of his eye she is in a great peril

But even now, he's the one to make her feel whole

As his bubbling anger becomes palpable

Her now clammy hands begin to quiver

If he wanted, he'd be unstoppable

But would he really pull that trigger?

She swallows

As the sweat on her forehead meets the icy chill of metal

And for a brief moment, she wishes herself dead

Maybe then, she thinks, the violence will settle

But her eyes meet the devil instead

For a moment time is frozen in its tracks

While the oxygen in her lungs escapes her

And as she waits for the world to go black

All she can smell on his breath is the liquor

Lips that once brought peace to the epitome of her soul

Now twisted into an unknown feral grimace

With wide eyes, she watches as his mind begins to unravel

And she braces herself to bare witness

But the end never arrives

And instead in its place

She awakens to find she survives

However,

With the memory of his untamed face

Burned in her brain

stars.

The world slowly became twinkling stars behind her closed eye lids. Billions of tiny droplets in the vast space made up of the broken dreams and shattered promises that once made her feel whole.

As the stars began to fade and her world became black, all she could hear was one last blood-curdling sound that pierced through all of her senses.

She couldn't be sure where the sound had originated - whether it was him or her - but she was absolutely sure of the pain that was stabbing her in the chest as the world continued to tumble away from her.

Was this what it felt like to be at the end of one's rope?

Where nothing else mattered but survival in all of its entirety, as shaky legs left her melting to the ground in a limp puddle at his feet.

But still the world continued to fade.

It was then that she began to believe that she wouldn't make it out of her circumstances unscathed.

For once upon a time, the hands wrapped around the stretched-out, whit skin at the base of her neck were sweet, as they caressed circled into her cheek as a sign of affection.

Now, however, those same hands were rough, as oxygen began to come more shallow into her lungs.

She knew the end was near.

It must have only been moments that the world shut off, in the end, for before she knew it, she was woken to the sticky feeling of sweat on her brow, and the sensation of air in her lungs.

And the knowledge that he, in fact, would never touch her with those devilish hands again.

what do I have to do to feel

safe again?

grey.

I was painted grey from the ashes of the photographs that depicted our failed life together, as one-by-one each photo of smiling faces with empty eyes burned in a pit fueled by despair.

I was grey in the sense all rational emotion left me, as I began to release every tangible memory of us into the flames that licked the air.

The embers burned my stained skin in every spot that the heat touched, turning me a sallow shade.

But still, I remained grey.

Grey in the sense that the damage caused by your loss had left me disconnected from reality for far too long, leaving me to wonder if balance would ever again find me.

Grey left me feeling neutral - or was I numb? - to the sinking feeling that life in itself had become so bittersweet.

When the flames died down, however, the world began to shift, and suddenly I was made up of the vibrant colors the flames produced.

Red's. Orange's. And the slightest gleam of gold.

No longer was I void of emotions.

I became the embodiment of passion, happiness, and hope.

I tucked away the matte grey tones for another day, embracing the not-so-subtle change within me, as I consciously decided our smoldering ashes would not define me one second longer.

november dawns.

I crave the simple things

Like the way my favorite faded cotton blanket

Felt against heated skin

On those crisp November mornings

When the first taste of vanilla flavored coffee

Touched my parched lips

And burned its way down my unsuspecting throat

Much like the memory

Of you

Still does

I crave the soft sound of raindrops

Hitting the outside of my old window

As the hum of the wind blew brightly colored leaves

To the ground

I can see it through the glass

Even now

Though time has passed

And my view has changed

As November comes back

To haunt me

Again

I crave those dawns long past

Where the chill of the damp air

Left me almost breathless

As I lay

Wrapped in your embrace

While you slept

Peacefully

Beside me

I crave those November dawns

Like it was yesterday

Like you are still a part of me

When I dream

But when I am unable to sleep

And I lie awake

I imagine

All of the ways

You

Crave

Her

time-travel.

There was something wholly freeing about stumbling through the recesses of time.

One moment bracing myself to be twenty-five

Where hands I once loved deeply washed bloodstains from my eyes

And I became someone that few - if any - recognized.

Did my acidic heart stop beating that fateful June night

When he whispered into swollen ears how I'd be his sacrifice

Or was it the burning desire with me to roll over and die

That made me question if I'd ever survive

I found myself to be tumbling down a rocky mountainside

Where the dust that settled of my life

Left me longing to be freed from the prison that was my own mind

It grew to be palpable, as I fought to be revived

Now twenty-nine.

I question how I could ever have been so blind

To the detriment his love left behind

As my dreams wrap safe arms around me that my heart recognizes

And blue eyes that are understanding, not patronizing

I've often counted the days wondering when it'd be my turn for a certain kind of paradise

When you waltzed in, took one look at my smile

And made the parasites

That reside inside me melt like ice

Causing the demons inside to subside

As safe arms wrap around skin till the sun rises

One more time.

scribbles.

I used to scribble

The desires that burned deep

Within me

On empty pages

Where the fears that choked me

Held no weight

But now

The pages between the bind remain blank

While I can still read between the lines

You touched

With hands that didn't love me

All that much

You're the whole damn universe,

baby

And he is just grasping for

stars