Urban ghost hunting

I'm haunted by: bridges I almost jumped off of

Streets named after pedophiles 

Numbness where there should be feeling

Fire damaged flower boxes where nothing will ever grow again

The stubbornness that kept me alive once now just keeps me awake

But I dont mind because now I'm afraid to sleep.

I'm the most afraid of how boring it was to hurt me. All it did was teach me

To lie to myself

About what hurts. So the smoke of my own burning body doesnt scare me like it should.

The threat of a stranger's confusion

a childhood friend's dirty secret

a new lover's fragile ego

of an empty stomach, of an overloaded nervous system, of a closed throat or a spinning head or an obliterated ribcage

Mean nothing to me anymore.

And that scares the people who love me

They tell me it shoulder matter

And I feel their distress, but I sincerely wonder 

Why I should start to care now.

In the small hours

Let me reach in and touch 

the scared rabbit that is

your heart.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty Nine of Isolation

Words stopped being pretty about three months ago,
that's when the last shine drained from language for me.
I can't pin down the moment it happened, but
I forget the things it's supposed to represent.
I can't picture them, I can't feel them
I don't remember who I am.
I am lost on the metaphor, the phrase has turned on me
(okay, that made me smile for a second)
and this, is just habit now. A ritual I can't stop
repeating to the rhythm of my resentment.
Dead fingers threading dead letters together for... I can't remember.
But this meant something once.
Of that I am still completely sure
for now.