i like to tell myself stories about lives that haven't been lived, even though i am still the same person with the same bad habits and the same cobweb brain. i am still starving i am still dying i am still terrified. i am living off of steam from the shower and expired anxiety medicine and my head is filled with fog, medicated and tired and screaming the whole way down the hill. i'm tired of thinking tired of counting grains of rice and swallowing them like pills and i'm tired of sticking bandaids to my broken bones and i'm tired of being dizzy of hiding behind locked doors tired of being here of being anywhere i want to lie down in a field of flowers and watch the long grass grow through me i want to lie in your bed and stare up at your ceiling because your room smells like lavender and you and i miss your hands in my hair and maybe it's not you i miss but i miss feeling safe and you were the only safety i knew. when i lie outside in the grass in front of my house i stare up at the sky and listen as the clouds whisper to each other, floating along on silk strings. i like collecting shards of glass and putting them back together to make something pretty and i like the way the water runs over the freckles on my shoulder when i sit in the shower and cry. the world is beautiful and tragic and when the sun paints the clouds i like to match the colors to the bruises on my skin. rainstorms fall out of my eyes and flowers grow around my feet where the rain fell and i am sad and tired and terrified and the world is too pretty for someone like me.