Let Us Believe
Open Wounds On Your Brow.
We were always fucked up teenagers, weren't we?
With the blood indelible in our sick minds and the insanity trespassing the limits of our scarred tissue and ingraining itself deep inside our already injured veins, already holed skin, already blackened hearts. The ink metastasized throughout our bodies, the cancerous indigo tainting our fucking souls with impure thoughts. Those thoughts that nobody ever really understood, because it was impossible to comprehend why we'd cast such a miserable sorrow over our already filthy lives; the lives of living carnage outstretching towards us with their dead dead hands and ugly ugly eyes.
There was no way to explain to our parents why we came to love those cerise shadows spewing out of ourselves, creating crimson silhouettes on the beige carpets, the blue bathroom tiles. No possible explanation could be given to the psychologist as to why we decided it could be fun to find shapes amongst the bloodstains, the way little kids do with those unreachable, blinding-white clouds that are so far out of reach.
“Doesn't that remind you of a flower?”
“It looks like a gun to me.”
Laughter.
Then a toothy grin screaming out for help, the cries drowned by all those criticizing glares we were met by when people discovered our hemoglobin staining their beige carpets, their blue bathroom tiles. They couldn't really grasp the fact that we'd fallen in love with the pain; that our masochist blood longed to run free down the highway of our arms. It was that itch that urged us through life. That erotic craving was the first noticeable thing I distinguished in your permanently smirking face—the one with the scarred smile—, along with the apathy you used to slap everyone's intentions to help you away.
And how I long to feel those bruises on your thighs burning my retinas in a passionate spark of cremated feelings, because we were human, after all. If we couldn't speak with our cut-up vocal chords, we'd suffice with each other's breaths corrupting our lungs and traveling down our medullas. If we couldn't caress our cheeks lovingly, tracing patterns on flawless skin, we'd be content just to feel each other's phalanges scratching at the dead cells on our flesh.
And we loved the pain. It kept us from being numb.
All those nights my fang-like teeth busted your lips open, you enjoyed it, because it made you feel miserable. We were oh so sad, yet oh so fucking in love with each other. I couldn't deny you the overwhelming numbness your mouth was smothered with when I bit your tongue savagely. And when you twisted your lit cigarettes into the back of my hand, leaving behind a hideous circle of ashy skin, I knew you couldn't neglect me the ache, either.
But it wasn't enough. I could see the question lingering in split pupils, four black holes swallowing your eyes in a desperate scream. Deep inside, burrowed in my bloodstream as if it was a hereditary disease carried by unforgiving DNA, as if it was an acute migraine sharpening the pain in my brain, I must've known the answer. It was the HIV waiting to turn positive, the tumor waiting to be classified as malign, the trigger waiting to be pulled.
I was always selfish, you just didn't notice. False naivety, the feelings eating you inside out as if you were waiting until your skeleton was finally exposed to the bleak air. Your every move screamed out how much you just wanted to be shattered, only to reborn from the dust left in the ground. Always with the hope of being a disguised phoenix, and I couldn't possibly tell you otherwise, could I? Every whispered “Will we make it?” clinging to my raw red flesh and shattering my breaths as they fell like heavy meteors on your torso; every muttered question flooding the cuts on my chest and stinging my unhealthy epidermis.
It was always fearlessly crimson, my skin. Hours spent under the fiery droplets of water, the cleansing, burning liquid depriving me of pain for a few minutes. Because sometimes, I wanted my concern to subside; maybe I cared too much. I couldn't take your mute pleas, the suffocating love we couldn't show because we were so fucked up. We were ghouls who delighted in the morbidity of ourselves and our torn up anatomy.
The routine had me stepping under the shower of fire bullets every night, your tainting lips still hovering above my face like a permanent reminder of how much I longed to be in your embrace and have you in mine. Gunshot wounds lingered in my back in the form of burnt skin adhered to weak bones, and I just couldn't have it any other way. It was me striving to fully understand where we stood and why. It was me endeavoring to know what had thrust us into this torment we couldn't put a stop to. I just wanted to hold you in my arms, and it was always the same.
Only one time was it slightly different. How I wish it hadn't been.
It was simple, electrifying, and final. My fingers curling around the hairdryer, the latter plugged in. Me under a putrefying lightning I'd maneuvered to hit me. My bones incandescent as if they were an x-ray reflected against the black of the night, fluorescent and haunting. I could've done it another way, have you tell me you loved me with one last ragged sob. But I couldn't face you as I did it. I knew how selfish I had been and still was.
I didn't deserve to have the privilege of holding your hand and stare at your dim eyes as life was violently torn out of me; wasn't brave enough to see the collision of hope swarming your insides cathartically in a copper crimson fulmination. The courage hadn't been in me to tell you that we wouldn't make it, something I'm sure I knew all along.
One second, muscles spasmodically contracting, and I was gone.
-
And I know I broke us apart. I was the cause of your shouts that one last time, as you barged into the bathroom, where the water was still running. Will telling you I'm sorry ever be enough? Will it clean the visions off your sight, wipe the cries off the air, dissipate the smell of scorched flesh off your lungs, make you see you're still alive? You couldn't even hold me, I couldn't even feel you. I'm sorry is not enough, never will be.
It can't erase the devastation crisscrossing your eyes, won't change the fact that the answer to your question was no. It will never make up to relentless nights spent thinking of what you did wrong, when you never did any harm to anyone but yourself. It wouldn't matter, because I can't kiss it all better, something I'd kept wanting to do but always refrained myself from doing. We were always fucked up teenagers, after all.
Can you feel me now, hugging you while you have nightmares? I just want to tell you I'm proud. I just want to tell you this is all I ever hoped for, to see how the number of scars slowly but surely decreased. But I fucking can't, because I'm not there anymore.
Still, as you stare down at my tomb, I can smile, because we didn't make it, but you did. I can be genuinely happy, Frank, because, out of the two, you were the one who made it; the one to break past blinding chains and razorblade emotions and waterfalls of poison. And I never did lie to you. I never did.
“Will… will we make it?”
“I don't know, Frank. God, I don't know. But… one day, we'll both smile.”
And I just want you to know, Frank, that you're free to smile now.
With the blood indelible in our sick minds and the insanity trespassing the limits of our scarred tissue and ingraining itself deep inside our already injured veins, already holed skin, already blackened hearts. The ink metastasized throughout our bodies, the cancerous indigo tainting our fucking souls with impure thoughts. Those thoughts that nobody ever really understood, because it was impossible to comprehend why we'd cast such a miserable sorrow over our already filthy lives; the lives of living carnage outstretching towards us with their dead dead hands and ugly ugly eyes.
There was no way to explain to our parents why we came to love those cerise shadows spewing out of ourselves, creating crimson silhouettes on the beige carpets, the blue bathroom tiles. No possible explanation could be given to the psychologist as to why we decided it could be fun to find shapes amongst the bloodstains, the way little kids do with those unreachable, blinding-white clouds that are so far out of reach.
“Doesn't that remind you of a flower?”
“It looks like a gun to me.”
Laughter.
Then a toothy grin screaming out for help, the cries drowned by all those criticizing glares we were met by when people discovered our hemoglobin staining their beige carpets, their blue bathroom tiles. They couldn't really grasp the fact that we'd fallen in love with the pain; that our masochist blood longed to run free down the highway of our arms. It was that itch that urged us through life. That erotic craving was the first noticeable thing I distinguished in your permanently smirking face—the one with the scarred smile—, along with the apathy you used to slap everyone's intentions to help you away.
And how I long to feel those bruises on your thighs burning my retinas in a passionate spark of cremated feelings, because we were human, after all. If we couldn't speak with our cut-up vocal chords, we'd suffice with each other's breaths corrupting our lungs and traveling down our medullas. If we couldn't caress our cheeks lovingly, tracing patterns on flawless skin, we'd be content just to feel each other's phalanges scratching at the dead cells on our flesh.
And we loved the pain. It kept us from being numb.
All those nights my fang-like teeth busted your lips open, you enjoyed it, because it made you feel miserable. We were oh so sad, yet oh so fucking in love with each other. I couldn't deny you the overwhelming numbness your mouth was smothered with when I bit your tongue savagely. And when you twisted your lit cigarettes into the back of my hand, leaving behind a hideous circle of ashy skin, I knew you couldn't neglect me the ache, either.
But it wasn't enough. I could see the question lingering in split pupils, four black holes swallowing your eyes in a desperate scream. Deep inside, burrowed in my bloodstream as if it was a hereditary disease carried by unforgiving DNA, as if it was an acute migraine sharpening the pain in my brain, I must've known the answer. It was the HIV waiting to turn positive, the tumor waiting to be classified as malign, the trigger waiting to be pulled.
I was always selfish, you just didn't notice. False naivety, the feelings eating you inside out as if you were waiting until your skeleton was finally exposed to the bleak air. Your every move screamed out how much you just wanted to be shattered, only to reborn from the dust left in the ground. Always with the hope of being a disguised phoenix, and I couldn't possibly tell you otherwise, could I? Every whispered “Will we make it?” clinging to my raw red flesh and shattering my breaths as they fell like heavy meteors on your torso; every muttered question flooding the cuts on my chest and stinging my unhealthy epidermis.
It was always fearlessly crimson, my skin. Hours spent under the fiery droplets of water, the cleansing, burning liquid depriving me of pain for a few minutes. Because sometimes, I wanted my concern to subside; maybe I cared too much. I couldn't take your mute pleas, the suffocating love we couldn't show because we were so fucked up. We were ghouls who delighted in the morbidity of ourselves and our torn up anatomy.
The routine had me stepping under the shower of fire bullets every night, your tainting lips still hovering above my face like a permanent reminder of how much I longed to be in your embrace and have you in mine. Gunshot wounds lingered in my back in the form of burnt skin adhered to weak bones, and I just couldn't have it any other way. It was me striving to fully understand where we stood and why. It was me endeavoring to know what had thrust us into this torment we couldn't put a stop to. I just wanted to hold you in my arms, and it was always the same.
Only one time was it slightly different. How I wish it hadn't been.
It was simple, electrifying, and final. My fingers curling around the hairdryer, the latter plugged in. Me under a putrefying lightning I'd maneuvered to hit me. My bones incandescent as if they were an x-ray reflected against the black of the night, fluorescent and haunting. I could've done it another way, have you tell me you loved me with one last ragged sob. But I couldn't face you as I did it. I knew how selfish I had been and still was.
I didn't deserve to have the privilege of holding your hand and stare at your dim eyes as life was violently torn out of me; wasn't brave enough to see the collision of hope swarming your insides cathartically in a copper crimson fulmination. The courage hadn't been in me to tell you that we wouldn't make it, something I'm sure I knew all along.
One second, muscles spasmodically contracting, and I was gone.
-
And I know I broke us apart. I was the cause of your shouts that one last time, as you barged into the bathroom, where the water was still running. Will telling you I'm sorry ever be enough? Will it clean the visions off your sight, wipe the cries off the air, dissipate the smell of scorched flesh off your lungs, make you see you're still alive? You couldn't even hold me, I couldn't even feel you. I'm sorry is not enough, never will be.
It can't erase the devastation crisscrossing your eyes, won't change the fact that the answer to your question was no. It will never make up to relentless nights spent thinking of what you did wrong, when you never did any harm to anyone but yourself. It wouldn't matter, because I can't kiss it all better, something I'd kept wanting to do but always refrained myself from doing. We were always fucked up teenagers, after all.
Can you feel me now, hugging you while you have nightmares? I just want to tell you I'm proud. I just want to tell you this is all I ever hoped for, to see how the number of scars slowly but surely decreased. But I fucking can't, because I'm not there anymore.
Still, as you stare down at my tomb, I can smile, because we didn't make it, but you did. I can be genuinely happy, Frank, because, out of the two, you were the one who made it; the one to break past blinding chains and razorblade emotions and waterfalls of poison. And I never did lie to you. I never did.
“Will… will we make it?”
“I don't know, Frank. God, I don't know. But… one day, we'll both smile.”
And I just want you to know, Frank, that you're free to smile now.