alone with a blanket

nights like these,
thick and deserted, live eyes that are
wide, manic, desperate, 
with hands in the pupils, clawing out for a salvation that is
sorely out of sight.

nights like these, 
cold and disgraceful, live lips now parched,
lined with dried blood. nights like
these,
where skin off my face reside
dead beneath my frantically bitten nails.

nights like these,
impulsive and raw, lives I,
who lie on floors to etch closer to gravity’s
pull, yearning, pleading for its grasp, 
to plunge me down through these
layers and layers of life,
of cement, of plaster, until i hit the ground
and shatter,
along with the wreckage i caused along the way,
until i feel nothing.
nothing.

nothing.

then nothing can shake me.

it is nights like these,
sad and heavy,
when even the moon cannot shed light
on a soul like mine,
blackened with fear,
contaminated with madness.

the curtains are closed.

i am mad, i think? i think i am mad.

nights like these,
when i contemplate on the unforgivable,
and wonder if that son of a bitch
really wasn’t a son of a bitch,
and if i were in his skin, behind his eyes, inside his head,
i would’ve abused me, too,

yes. 
i would hit myself, too, i would kick myself, too,
i would spit at myself, too,
i would throw myself to the floor and knee myself in places that cannot heal, too
because aren’t i just one colossal show reel of the best nightmares?

and who’d want nightmares
when they can choose between good dreams or sleeping pills or drugs or death or anything else that 
stops you
from having nightmares?

nights like these,
deaf and blind,
when it becomes clear to me
that the happiness i seek
is always inside me,
but i have just chosen to look the other way and

blame the world for what i am doing to myself.