Text: Dear and the Headlights. Small Steps, Heavy Hooves. Grace.

Shaking my teeth loose on your table
The dullest white squares I'll never be
Now that you've picked each one apart you can't look at me
I'll probably lose you now
But at least the ones I have still sparkle

Putting on your makeup everyday before he wakes up
So he could stomach your face now easier than he could without

Yeah this is love
This is all that you could want
Open equals heavier

Hold your hand out palm side up
Open, empty, light enough
Minutes all turn to months
This is one thing we have all learned
Equations always make up a sum
But it doesn't add up

Signing up for that second semester
Because you won't marry me without the degree
Once I fix things up right you wont be so embarrassed of me

But I'll never make it now

But at least looking in the mirror wont feel like lying

Posing for your still visions
Acedemic postcard prisons

Raise your chin, love

Purged a poem I swore was finished

Heaping lines half chewed unconscious

Settle on a plot, chalk another loss
Stage set for
Breathing and choking on swallowed conversations
Clutching and crawling for constant validation
Still nailed in the ruins of corporate co-dependence
Still stuck on the thought that you're the one exception

All the while the same

I'm worried that the purpose is
How I look, not how I lived
Let's get dolled up and play pretend
Cause nothing stays honest when
Every thought is cursed with intent
A pulse covered in skin and words covered in lips

The taste of regret as it leaves your stomach
Coating your tongue with every noun
Watery eyes the only thing that makes sense now

Spitting your insides out

Start over
Start over

Start over
Start over
Start over