Cotton & Quicksand

Healing is a jagged line and a crooked path

I keep trying to do the work, but it's like quicksand

Unearthing burials to get to the bones

The movement only causes me suffering

Scarcity of breath in moments, with no reprieve

I search for an exit, any outlet, relief

Only to run face-first into walls cased in rejection

A peculiar brand of suffering, like cutting wrists

Shell-shocked by pain, followed by a dull numbing

A wave of freedom washing over my body

as the repercussions of what I've done slip down sides

Shed like snakeskin

Stained cotton has become my body armor

and I dance recklessly around a bonfire made in that sand

Shoeless and without sanity, just wine; bottled poetry

A caving inward from the external requests

Sweet sinking, beneath the surface

The claws still come, though, and then the teeth

The ones I've sharpened on all of the men before

They only like you when you bite them in the bedroom, you know-