So there's this girl, a tall girl, with eyes like honeycomb and jasmine
Sometimes she blows cigarette smoke in your face in the break room, and you call that love
Not because it is, but because you want it to be
Because you're so goddamned lonely, so goddamned unable to handle the ocean roar in your ears when you're alone
You tell yourself that the ash in your lungs is as good as a kiss goodnight, and you write poems about the smoke tendrils whispering off her lips
How beautiful they are, how like the aching arms of god you always wanted them to be
One night, you're tired, so very tired
Your eyes as heavy as water
You forget where you are, in the break room at a Walmart at 2:30 in the morning and you leave your notebook unattended on the table, left out for anyone in the world to see
One of your coworkers picks it up and reads the poems you wrote about the girl with honeycomb and jasmine in her eyes
And you panic when you realize what just happened
And you panic when you realize what just happened because the boy who picked up your notebook, he's a cruel boy
With eyes like shotguns and razorwire
He buys you razorblades on your birthday so you can do the job right next time, you fucking freak
And you can't believe that you aren't one
Can't believe you deserve to be anything
Some days, you don't even try to hide the angry marks on your arm, like your skin is a test where you got every question wrong
One night, there's a boxcutter with a brand new blade
A stack of cardboard boxes begging to feel its tooth
You dig in but something's wrong, the fiber's too gnarled and you can't seem to cut clean
You push, hard as you can, feel the stiff tangle of glue give way, and there's blood on the floor, the blade half an inch in your wrist, but you don't feel it
The shift manager is in your ear, angry because he has to take you to the hospital
And there's a janitor who'll forever hold it against you for staining his clean, clean floor
And there's everyone you work with and their hostile eyes glaring, knowing this was always, always coming along
That there's that cacophony, all those ghosts reminding you of your destiny for failure
And there's another blade
And there's a bottle of pills, a fifth of vodka, a hospital visit, two weeks of inpatient while your whole family prays for you to get better
There's a doctor with blank eyes who never looks at you
He's always scribbling things on his clipboard
Everything you say, he documents, even when you're not talking to him
You don't smoke, but you still go out for smoke breaks with everyone else on the ward because there's nothing else to do but stare at the walls, and wait for the next group session to start
So you hang out in the courtyard, not smoking cigarettes but still befriending those who do
And there's a man
Maybe ten years older than you, with eyes like rough-cut pine and sunset
He notices you don't smoke, so he tries to stay downwind from you so he doesn't exhale in your face
He tells you "it's okay, bud"
"We'll get through this and be better when we leave this place than it was when we got here"
And he's telling you the truth
And you believe him
One day, the doctor who doesn't look at you comes to your room and tells you that your insurance isn't paying for any more days, so you're all better now
And you leave
Your mom picks you up in the lobby and her eyes are the most worried kindness you've ever seen and you go home
And you fight off the ghosts, which is easier now than it was before, because now you have a better set of tools today, and your life goes on like it was meant to
Like you were always supposed to survive the fight
You stop writing poems about smoke tendrils trailing off the lips you once wanted to kiss
Or about how your loneliness is so unbearable, because now you write poems about how to stay alive
You write poems about the places you feel at home rather than the places you wish you could be
One day, you catch a glimpse of someone in the mirror, and there you are
Eyes like stubbornness and struggle
Like the brick buildings in abandoned factory towns that refuse to fall completely
You look at all the scars, the history etched into your arms like a road map of where you used to be
Versus the endless possibilities of where you are and where you can go now
And the smoke tendrils, once midnight black and swirling above your head, break away, leaving nothing in your view except the sky
And it is so perfect
And it is so clear