Like Blood from a Stone

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