Time and courage alone
can end this torment.
But enduring chasms of pain,
only to then inflict more,
on myself and others
seems like a disproportionate
amount of suffering
for the owl-eyed girl
who made pretend perfume
in her childhood garden.
They say not to seek out the thing
that finds you often enough,
but I feel at peace in his arms,
in the predictability of sadness.
Was the periphery our first god?
Was my cage preordained?
Between love and grief,
is there a softer kind of ruin?
Or must one always bleed into the other?
Would it be so bad to surrender
this spoiled fruit, swarming with flies
when the sweetest sleep beckons?
YOU ARE READING
Blood Orange Periphery
PoetryMy suicide had been two years in the making when I decided not to follow through at the last minute. Over the past decade, I've written poems, books, short stories, fanfiction and hundreds of thousands of words, but nothing felt complete. This coll...
