it’s ten at night

you’re listening to sad songs on repeat because they are the aloe that you need right now for the heat in your chest and that fire burns bright silver and sky high and it’s become everything you are

people are only worried when that fire is black because they can’t see themselves in it, no, they can’t see their medicines and words and hugs in that fire but when it’s silver it looks bright it makes you look like you’re okay

just like a mirror you can see things in silver

in silver you can see your own face and everything around you, and when people can see what they want to see in you they don’t feel like they need to pull you out from the ocean you’re really drowning in

then as it turns out that ocean isn’t going to extinguish the flames that tear at your insides because your own body, the vessel that holds your parts, stands between the redeeming water and the burning inside

and it’s because there’s only one thing standing between you and finality that you decide to turn that sharp edge on yourself and that lets the water come in to smother the fire that’s threatening to melt the gears that let you move and trap what’s left of you in steel

when the water floods in the music pours in with it and it soothes your aching wounds

that music speaks for you more than you can by yourself

...

it’s ten at night

and only you can feel the house burn.