My sadness reaches through you. Guts spilling on the floor. You can’t bring yourself to mop it up. Fall face first and shatter your teeth on the way down, but I still like your smile. Always telling me that I’ve been asleep for the past three years. Maybe you’re right. It’s not that easy. It never was. I hear static when you speak and it numbs me. I wish I could hear your pleading words. I wish I felt free again. I wish I could bring myself to hold my hands up and say, “mercy be with me” but my voice chokes on every syllable. I wish I’d stop clawing at the earth for nostalgia because I forgot where it’s buried. I wish I was seventeen. I wish the emptiness was filled with something, even if that meant drowning myself. I wish my sadness didn’t reach through you. Don’t let me make you feel sick. Don’t drink poison and say that I fed it to you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. -AMT©️