truce » poetry

nothing

pain is a strange thing. a twisted, skeletal tree clawing its way up from fertile, glimmering grass and marring the sky. it takes your breath away and you can feel it. you can feel your lungs expanding and collapsing, breathing this emotion that grips your heart like a vice. the blood doesn't pump anymore. all your organs are failing but that's what you wanted anyway.

you are destroying yourself.

it's not beautiful. it's not the last breath of the sun as it dies and resurrects, it's not the last flame of a phoenix as it's born again. it's nothing. it's a nothing composed of an everything so wide that it's all you can feel and maybe your lungs weren't meant for oxygen, they were made for hurt.

because the artist that spent loving, backbreaking work on your body forgot to bring his paint so instead he dipped his brush into his open vein. you weren't meant to be born out of spilled blood and loud thoughts. your hair should've been made from sunlight and your skin should've been crafted from the stars and midnight valleys but this kind of pain is premeditated.

you are what art becomes after it's been abandoned by its creator, you are the ugly things in the world, the self-hatred, the tears that rival the oceans, the scars in hidden places, the dying stars that still aren't released because their light still lives on.

you are the end of the universe, and the universe is infinite.

you are a sea of shadow and lightless suns, corpses of celestial giants that once were untamed in their beauty and assurance. they once had a place in the solar system, like you, like all of us. then they fell, like you, like some of us, and they began an undignified death behind your eyes, trapped inside something so small it's a wonder you haven't exploded yet.

but you will.

i can see it every time i look at you. i don't want to look at you. don't look at you.

and you aren't any of this. you aren't anything. you are me, you are my fingers, you are nothing. what shows that you exist? what shows that you are more than organs and worthless, useless thoughts pinned to a name that's been used by others and discarded on their tombstones? what are you, other than a jailer? you pick up these ghosts and you don't even know it, but you do. and you take these ghosts and confine them inside your sorry mind, and your words are tainted by ectoplasm because they aren't even yours.

you aren't even yours.

you aren't you.

you are everything you aren't. you are hopeless generations of weariness and miracles made of broken glass and spite.

you are nothing.