I

          hate you.

Only in moments when the sun has fallen to another world and your fists beat down like raining stones.

Fingers digging into skin and my legs are burning a thousand bruises that cannot be seen.

Your words etch into me and I want to bury nails into my flesh because you won’t stop screaming and

I

          want to die.

But I won’t utter a word until you leave because salty tears are staining my sleeves and I hid a knife between the board that seals the wall and my bed.

You won’t see the barcodes I imprinted along my thighs and you won’t find the blades I wrestled from plastic razors.

Sometimes I wonder how I’m still breathing when my lungs have drowned under your weight.

I’m just

          lost.

Stuck under skyfuls of regrets and mistakes and leaps of faith that never stooped low enough to catch me.

I fell with the melting wax of Icarus’ wings and plunged straight into a sea of ice where words were torn away by the laughing waves.

I am the fragments of a poem. Broken lines and the art unveiled in a playlist of songs.

I do not

          hate you.

Sometimes my brain forms thoughts that even I cannot comprehend.

Sometimes I wonder if I really know you when I do not even know myself.

I am a collector of pieces, finding bits of my composition in every passing moment and I think

I want

          to live.