_sean

broken people like to write poems about how they are broken.
they like to turn people into words because no one's heart
has ever been punctured by parentheses, but by god it's not
for lack of trying. in a poem, broken people can have hangnails
and they never have to brush their hair because the tangles
symbolize the time they lost their virginity and there are no mirrors
unless they write about one and force themselves to look into it.
broken people also like to use cliche metaphors
but that is okay because when you are broken
sometimes cliche metaphors are all you have left.
"i am a rose and you think I'm beautiful so you
keep ramming me into your eye, thorn first."
"i am uncut grass and you roll around in me,
joyful, shaking, but when you stop to catch
your breath and look at your forearms you
see that they're covered in hundreds of tiny cuts."
"i am a dandelion. i don't know why but goddammit
i am tender and damaged
broken people are good at diagnosing themselves
but bad at fixing themselves. sometimes they are left-handed.
i read this story about a man who was shipwrecked
on a desert island. he used driftwood and conch shells
to spell out "HELP" on the shoreline. then he starved to death and died.
broken people know what the sand felt like beneath
his fingernails and what he saw every time he closed his eyes.
I am broken, and once i broke someone.
they told me, "if you were a dandelion
then i would pick you and freeze dry you
and keep you forever and people would ask
why i have a weed in my house and I'd say,
'because she makes me happy.'"