Lying on the floor staring at the ceiling

Choking on my blood, the voices stopped screaming.

Dripping in red, I cry

These silent tears that don't dry

They soak the carpet underneath

Fall between the cracks in the floor

The cracks in my heart.

I hear the sirens coming from far

And it's such a bittersweet alarm.

Always too far

You can't reach what you can't reach

But I wish under the haze of defeat

That someone sees the building I painted red in every scene

Screams with a voice I don't have

That someone in there needs.

Cars pass the windows, and the shadows dance in front of my eyes.

Life is always so fast

Chasing and running

Dodging all attempts

Winning the race and ruling it

The prize and the racer

The player and the game

How do you win such a game?

The endless road stretches on for miles

And under the shade of red wine

I taste the bitterness of every failure I hid under a smile

You can't hide what you can't hide

But you can try

And you can fall trying

You can reach the bottom of yourself trying.

It's a belief that I have

A fear that I have

A vision so clear every time I think

I just want to rest

A fall so deep every time I close my eyes and think

I just

Want to rest.

If I stop trying, I'll die

If I stop trying, I'll be spread wide

Open for anyone who has eyes.

They'll see the scars and the failures

The fears and the pains and the regrets and the overwhelming sadness I can't fight most days.

The blood, the blood, the blood.

I can't let them see

How messed up I can be

But staring with blurry eyes in an unidentified night

I think maybe I tried too hard

Because now, no matter what I say or do

Nobody

Sees.

A laugh bubbles out of me uncontrolled

It burns my throat and makes the night more unreal

Because ah

I tried too hard, didn't I?

Always an overachiever

Even in pain.

The laugh is hysterical and unplaced in the pool of red I became

But another one soon follows after

And another

Laughing

I am laughing at my life more than anything

At the way I always pick the road with the more pain

The alley with the less light

At my inability to live in anything remotely light

At my fear and wincing face every time the sun shines

A new battle a new scar

"You really have to try."

I got too used to the night

Too used to hiding in its sights

My shadows are bigger than me

I accepted that a long time ago

I have a body

And it's not mine.

Accepted, screamed, nodded, sobbed

I try.

The shadows are so tall

Like a family figure that was supposed to be safe

And a dream limit that was never supposed to end

Like an alight soul that was supposed to live.

Ah

Blinking in the darkness, I try to gather my thoughts

Strings on strings

Voices on voices

It's hard to follow a single one

But the shadows

Yes

Those are easy to find

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A soul knows itself more than anyone after all

A soul knows itself.

The shadows are loud

Not in the dramatic sense

Of screams and wails

No

The shadows are so loud

And it makes the silence suffocate every light.

Feeling something dark resting under my skin

Feeling it rear its head every time I lose control

Every time the smile strains under the weight

Of trying all the damn time.

Hearing an echo of a silence that should be void

And yet

It's like an illusion.

A carefully crafted one that sometimes

Sometimes, I wonder

If I am imagining things.

But I am not

I know I am not

I hope

I wish

Because the itch I scratch in my arm says

There is something vile hiding inside

Behind the curtains, slumbering

Showing a silence that smiles while covering chaos upon chaos

Loss upon loss.

It's not loud

It's not screaming

It's shattering

And in front of the silence

All I can do is scream

So I do

I do.

I hear whispers of laughs every time I break

Like a puppet hanging by a thread

I entertain the crowd with every new pain

And I can't talk or cry or ask for help or do anything anything at all

Because it's silent

Yes

I am the only one who is screaming.

Lying on the cracked floor with a cracked heart

I laugh and cry and hope

And I try

This is me trying, I want to scream

But I don't.

Whose tries end in blood?

Nobody will believe.

Hearing the sirens coming closer, I close my eyes and hide

Because oh they'll see

They'll see and look and pity

And I just wanted the voices to stop

Why

Why do they never stop

Opening my eyes to a blurry picture of a worried woman, I sob.

Why do they never stop?

I can see the pain in her eyes, and it cuts the places I left uncut

Because under the curse of the silence

I did everything I could, and it ended with me here

Grasping onto threads of life

With a foot out the door

Away from the cliff

Watching pain bloom in another person

That's too different from the one I always see in my dreams.

It hurts.

More than anything

More than any blade

The grief of not being loved

It always hurts

So

So much.

With blood leaving me and falling

And tears streaming silently

Under the careful touches of hurried hands

And the shouting voices that soothe the ache of being unheard

I close my eyes and stop trying

Like a line in a hospital

Finally, ceasing the fight

I stop

And hope that it would become the end.

(It lingered there, deep inside my heart

Behind that wall of laughs

Under the cover of who I had to be

Inside the box of every loss I had

The dream of seeing honeyed eyes looking with love

Light safe fingers that follow the scars like they are made of stars

A deep embrace that whispers to my heart and protects

A moment of silence

That makes me feel the warmth of being alive.

It lingered there and stayed

Hidden behind my eyelids, afraid

Because when I opened my eyes

I saw eyes staring through me like glass

And wished with loud wails

That I was anything other than what I was born as.)