clavicola:

Writing these poems hurts in all the places it shouldn’t.

Please. 
Don’t pick at your scabs to see if you can find a story underneath.
Red continents line your knees and all of our stories begin the same, 
with “I was drunk and fell on the sidewalk and cracked open my skin
and bled a memoir.”

Leave those stones unturned. Save them for another poor soul
who doesn’t know that this world means killing yourself 
to prove that you’re a phoenix, 

                         rising. 

Because it’s one a.m. now and I’m coughing up a bloody poem
into tissue paper. With my head over the toilet bowl I’m choking out
regurgitated aches. I feel my heart beating beneath my fingernails
and by three a.m. I’ll have given myself open heart surgery 
by the glow of my computer screen. 

This poem is my attempt at self-defibrillation. 

I can save myself
just fine.