I found a trove of my old messages.
Things I said to faces now long gone
while I was very drunk or
very
high.

Throughout my life I've often manipulated,
played the martyr,
and acted the
victim.

I preyed on people with real feelings for me
that I never once returned.
But their infatuation brought an intoxication,
and I poured it into the depthless black of my self-hatred.

I railed against a world so shallow
when I was thinner than a dime.

I admit my sins, though I arrive too late.

Our mistakes are not ours alone,
the bodies stack like towers
in our wake.

Totems that remind us
that though we are sometimes unforgivable
we are never irredeemable,
and next time
we can choose
the right thing
to
do.

I guard you savagely
my gentle reminder,
that the harshness of life can be tempered
by innocent devotion
held in twice smaller hands.

You who always had luck on her lips
and cared for the lonely,
a balm for our aches and
a salve for our wounds.

We devoured your compassions
in the innocence of our depthless need,
and life, in the usual course,
returned little on the investment.

So let me be tangible.

Living proof that you're seen:
in the dark,
through the pain,
among the crowds,
among the stars.

A backstop for you to fall against
when in life's frenetic inevitibilities
you should ever lose sight of your feet.

I love you M,

from when you open your eyes
until you silently rest.

I promise you,
you will never be truly
alone.

I died in the afternoon
thats the end of me,
I thought the South would last forever
that there would always be a home.

Burn it all down now.
Not a soul will speak my name.
I am obsolete and outdated,
too old for 2am and on.

Why do all my outward gains feel so much like losses?

We searched so long for Eden
until the concrete became our blood.
Who are all these children that have covered up my walls?

Was I ever
really
there?

The only city I'll ever know again is the ink under my skin.

The cruelty of the changing season is almost too much for one to bear.

And in this moment I am again reminded
that life is still a tragedy
after
all.

In the end everything whole is broken,
the final scene written before the first line is said.
And though the story is always the same
the knowledge bears little comfort,
for there is no pain quite like
the loss of one leaving.

A girl's admiration
rightfully yields
to a wiser woman's understanding
that

I was a moment

one day remembered fondly.
A fever dream cocktail
of liquor,
sex,
powder,
and
sweat.

We hold on to nothing
as time offers no grip.
Today will vanish to be tomorrow recalled
and you will leave me forever
without ceremony or farewell,
because you too were a moment
and you were never meant
to
stay.