INNER CITY STORIES

This is not just another poem about brokenness, which is to say my heart cannot conjure up any more metaphors about how broken I feel inside. This is not just another poem with melodic rhythms for my soul. This is a poem about emptiness stuck to the back of my throat. My hollow stomach hungry for something other than this depression I’ve been eating, the sadness that leaves my tongue laced with distaste, bitter and dry. Read in-between the cracks of my skin and you'll find nothing, which is to say when people look at me they can't know the demons that hide inside the corners of my mind. My spine cannot stay upright anymore because of the weight of my sorrow. Lifeless bodies and dead butterflies gather in my surroundings; I have never felt so empty, which is to say everywhere I go everything seems so lifeless. I am withering away. Every breath fills my body with pain, with every step I take. Maybe this is a poem about caving in, about life hovering on the brink of death, which is to say I can't go a day without feeling this way, lingering in-between the days and nights that capture no life from the sunless sky. Hours drift away, yet this ticking clock that is my mind can't function correctly, always stuck at 3am, which is to say I’m now a lifeless body haunting my own home. I am nothing, with no vision of happiness. I hope I’ll get to live long enough to see.