Memoirs Of A Teenage Heart

Nothing but ink stars

Nothing but ink stars 

Every day I wonder why

I hold nighttime on my skin

The way a mirror reflects a stranger.

It rests super-imposed

beneath the lashes of my eyes,

a war zone of bruised crescent moons.

I can count the stars

that have fallen from my skies

because they are the scars on my wrists -

shackles amounting

to all of the moments when time 

stole the brilliance from my hands.

I am bound to darkness

the way the Earth is tethered

to the relentless arms of gravity -

do not you think

that the planet tires

of being burned by the sun?

And don’t you wonder

why it is that the sun still shines

even when it brings it closer to its demise?

To live life as Autumn 

(to await the breath of dawn

that finally heralds Winter’s arrival,

To fall away

into the embrace

of a Weeping Willow,

and be buried

six feet beneath

every lost memory)

is all I have ever known,

because I hold nighttime on my skin

the way the mirror holds the reflection of me.