love songs on the radio

'god doesn't love you / not like i do' – ethel cain

in dreams, you’ve got your milk and honey. your summer teeth are sharper than ever, cavity-filled desire preying on a pretty boy’s throat. (do you miss being everlasting?)

sixteen was an abomination / with an unhinged jaw / and bodies pressed between priest and pew. / seventeen was holding your head underwater any chance you got. / eighteen and nineteen reversed / into fourteen and fifteen with / slowly fading frostbit lips, / the doctors called it: hypothermia. / knuckles bruising themselves / in the dead of winter, / searching to thaw out sin. / plum-colored wine stains / the carpet from heaving whatever pills / the hospital couldn’t get out.

in dreams, he’s the one you’ve been looking for over and over and over again. miserable on the cold bathroom floor, lovesick with green and red contusions.

mercy on you, mercy on you, mercy on you.

carving names into willow trees wishing memory would stick. laying on rocks underneath the iron sun knowing you and the summer breeze would be dead soon. it’s all over now, you’re stuck in the middle of everything, life hasn’t begun yet.

in dreams, nobody’s there to hold you close. reality beats down hard enough to split skin.

how long will you continue to bleed for a miracle? yearning felt in a different organ doesn’t stop being want.

grasp that hand burning with white hot hate and love someone else tonight.