Bell bottoms and bare feet dancing upon the woven rug,

I am always chasing the places that I can never be:

Like the past, this thing that I cannot let go of.

Dancing beneath white Christmas lights in May, in June;

I will dance to anything when this silence grows too deafening –

Dance to the songs that will make me feel like my soul is crying while my eyes stay dry.

Four, five, six:

The birds begin to sing outside my bedroom window,

I still have not brought myself to close my eyes around the monsters that lurk in my chest,

The wolf that lives in my ribcage,

That howls at the moon of my heart,

Grinds it between his dark jaws.

He piles my bones in the pit of his belly as I stack books to the ceiling,

A twelve-point barricade,

I open them up one by one and pour them into my head.

The stories do not hurt so much when they are not my own.

I am only anything worth being when the world cannot see me,

I am only anything worth being when my hands are covered in my own blood,

This sickening stain.

How do I speak when my heart has decided to rest,

A nest of muslin butterflies and broken glass in my throat?