Steady as a beating drum. 

Begin to End

They want you to do what’s best for you until that best excludes them, leaves them behind, or can’t be satisfied by just them. When you need more because everything you had is destroying you, so you have no option but to start over or die as more pieces of yourself are razored away into faux stretch marks. When your own hands need to be left behind because they leave marks of darkness across your “perfect skin”, and your mind needs to be left behind because it tells you everyday you’ll never make it without jumping off the edge, without burning everything around you to the ground, or without watching as everything melts like crayons under the Las Vegas Sun. 

Bleeding until it’s all mixed. Into something beautiful? Something abstract? Something that hardens and becomes twisted from the original rainbow of beauty? The most beautiful things can turn into something you don’t recognize when the damage becomes too much, when the paper holding it together weakens, the beauty leaks out, oils stain the paper, even when what made it beautiful is gone, it’s never forgotten. How can it be when that’s the only reason it was ever wanted. 

What is this twisted thing, feet dangling, hands gripping the rail, mind miles down searching the ground for answers never found. How long to hit rock bottom, to begin again or embrace the end. To rise again or leave the splatter of color trailing into the sea and soaking the fallen leaves. 

Don’t want the world to know I’m by myself…don’t want the world to know I’m on your shelf…There’s no coloring around us anymore

– Coloring by Kevin Garrett

Never satisfied – insatiable

Always wandering – lost

Endlessly let down – disappointed

Trying to make it work – exhausted