If I were anything but ash and molten hopes I would worry too.

I have devil's water running through my coal-veins. Every morning, I get up and touch the mirror just so that I can fall into the reflection. Every change branded into the underside of my skin so that I can see their bitter stones sinking slowly through the uncharted rivers of my body. I am a façade. I am a lie. I have swallowed hearts and slung love at walls of destruction just to watch the plumes of smoke rise up the city atmosphere. I have watched my crumbling capillaries tie together into hangman's knots, my lips dyed red with lover and enemy alike. 

If I were anything but ash and molten hopes I would worry too.

I am a reverse phoenix who finds eternal death instead of everlasting life. You see, life is survival of the fittest and I am nothing if not a survivor. Life is survival of the fittest and I am the strongest one of all. I have fed and found nourishment in despair. My life stained with regret that even the strongest bleach cannot rid me of. With every day, this second skin stretches tighter and I can hear the monster bubbling under the surface. Behind my glazed eyes venom spreads into the gray, and from the inside I burn. It eats at my veins until I am empty. hollow. broken. But there, among the scars and the bones, I drown in my own silence as I wake in the middle of the night and run wild-eyed down the street with bloody footprints in my wake. Running from the fear that one day I will turn on myself.