Solstice

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Solstice

I.    I tried to hang myself with electrical wires on a utility pole

underneath pink clouds and above false sunflowers,

and the crows watched unfeelingly. I waited for them to stop me.

I waited for anyone to come stop me, but no one did,

so after the sun finally set I got down and went home.

I’m drowning in the shower and thinking about you.

I’m peeling off my skin and thinking about you. I’m looking

up your picture and talking to you, and I can almost hear your voice

telling me I freakin’ a-told ya so! and trust me, alright?

You’re not here,

But you are still a part of me. I have your heartbeat inside a locket

and fragments of your decaying bone on a chain,

and the radiation in the marrow is bleeding into me.

But baby, I would die a slow, excruciating death

a thousand times over if it meant keeping you with me always.

II.         I was nothing, so I wanted to be everything,

but the thing about everything is it gets bigger every day,

And it makes me so tired, you know, screaming into the abyss

as though anyone is actually listening and

spinning around, grasping for fourth and fifth chances

like a gunman firing blindly in every which direction,

hoping he’ll hit someone and it will ease his hate.

It never does.

It makes me so tired, you know, it makes me so sad,

to have to walk up and down this street a hundred times

and hope it will bring me closer to you.

It never does. It never...

III.          Your skeleton is green at the bottom of a pool of chlorine,

and the bumblebee floating on the water watched you eat yourself.

I tried to breathe life back into you, and when the water

didn't turn into wine, I tried to stay at the bottom with you,

gripping your femur like an anchor, but now

I’ve drifted back up to the surface.