when she enters the home i'm pacing back and forth, entirely nude if not for the myriad of bandages and belts and duct tape wrapping my body to cover up when i tried to cut out all the things that forever plague my being.

i know she worries, and i know she knows there is nothing she can do. this is simply the state of things, simply what i am.

post-it notes and papers line every inch of the walls while soda bottles and medicine capsules litter the floor, but all of it is empty.

there are no words in my brain to put down on the paper, for there are no words to express and there are no expressions to bother forming into words, it just helps me feel like i've fallen further off the deep end.

because that's what i want, to fall further off the deep end, because then there's an excuse for me to no longer try, an excuse to let someone else hold me and attempt to make everything alright.

because maybe then i can lie on a mattress, drenched in sweat and stained with excrement, while i wait for someone else to drag me off and hook up wires to my brain to turn these negative thoughts into a creative work, because we all know i can't write for shit.

she quit her job to take care of me but when she finally had enough she called the doctor and told them i was insane so they'd come over and pry open my brain, but all they found was a puddle of leeches, devoured from the inside out by a million maggots.

you could kiss me on the lips but you'd have to pull off this mask that the doctors made out of the remnants of my own face, because this morning i saw my eyes shine and i finally felt happy, but when i looked at them that night and the dullness had returned i just went and grabbed a knife.

so pull me off this mattress, sweep the floors and throw me in the tub, wash these coats of sorrow off my body and hold my head under so you can finally leave, unburdened and free.