Fuck it, I don’t need help to empty my chest of its hope.
I’ve counted all the secret passages in my rib cage,
all the unbroken ribs—

I’m the blur where negative space meets positive,
expelling the unwanted rainbows
on the dark horizon of tomorrow,
a beautiful arrangement of flesh that isn’t love.

I’ve asked myself how easy it might be to be made from pearls.
& I keep returning from the dead,
pried open by all the what-ifs.

Even my body is sure it can begin again
& I can’t stop the betrayal.

It’s destruction whispering through the barrel of a gun.

God knows me. I hear rain when he opens me.

I hold grief near-bent in a world of before & after.

Somewhere someone begs me
to say I love you to myself with the subtitles on.

There’s a jar inside my stomach
& it’s never going to stop breaking.