Today I discovered I have a desperate wish
to have someone to watch the sunset with
who will take my hand and rub their thumb
over my broken skin to heal my broken tongue
so I may speak to them little sentiments of light
as the sun goes down I want to provide them the fight
to breathe, to exist
and to hold my hand with
their eyes wide open and their iris's lit.
But who
would ever
love
a freak.
With hair chopped at its tips and scratches on my wrist.
Yet I meet eyes with those similar to me
our cuts run together but they run free
they are loved every day
and yet their eyes scream
that it
is not
enough.
And I wonder if I ever truly knew what love was.
Was it a collection of ideas I pulled from a book.
Was it the emotion I gathered from a childhood nook
in which I stayed and swayed and listened to the screaming
of the parents fighting, the love beating
down
my sore
throat.
And every day a child is crying.
And every day a child isn't dying
but existing, and this is worse than breathing
because they are not living
only standing
against a basement wall and their friends don't call








over
and we can romanticize being a wallflower but ultimately
flowers
wilt.
And we wilt with them, fragile creatures seeking love in a pill bottle
and seeking sanity in a drink.
And I'd rather
never
be happy
than to experience one more instance of a false relation
of a excited elation
that ends in tally marks on my legs.