Empty Things

Empty Things
By Muriel Palanca

My love is a shameful creature on a silhouette of decaying wings.
This fractured heart is a soliloquy filled with balloons and empty things.
There’s gravel dirt and weighted earth that beat against my chest.
It’s hard to breathe with you around but I’ll try to do my best.
I know that you’re accusing me and I pretend that I don’t care.
My filthy soul is on display but I wish you wouldn’t stare.
Your eyes are my black obsidian and I’m a traitor to my needs.
I’m using all you’re giving me because you love the way I bleed.
I’ll mark your back with my fingernails in shades of midnight blue.
Take me away with your unkind words and the wicked things you do.
You bruise my wrists and mar my skin to try to quench my thirst.
Pangs of sickness are creeping in but I like it better when it hurts.
I beg for you to scream for me because it’s too quiet in my head.
Echoes of your misery are all that remind me I’m not dead.
It rains like this for sixteen days and for thirteen nights, it snows.
There are seven things I try to find but only one that shows.
It’s the finest form of punishing. It’s like a suicide every time.
It cuts just like a razorblade and it’s the only thing that’s mine.
It’s a wound so deep it never heals, and I hope it never starts.
I want to be so close to you that I can feel your breaking heart.
And though it stings eternally, in daylight’s glow we can pretend,
That we’re as strong as we tell ourselves and it’ll never happen again.
But I know the truth. Before it’s done, you and I have lost the fight.
You need it just as much as me, so I’ll see you tomorrow night.