(tether the arch)

My brain is the habit harbored underneath a wayward grin. unbreakable as the day i first kissed you. terrifying as the time my father leaned in smiling, to tell me i had died.

But there all the time stumbling my heart across naked streets towards a tidy suicide.

In the morning there won't be memories. there won't be conversation. just a headache. a pang of regret. a resolution that this life won't keep happening again and again.

Still it does and this will even as i suck an unnecessary nightcap to abate all that's been fucking said already because i'm always so close to being exactly the fucking same.

I'm not, though. i never will be. i may kill a little something more each fucking day but at least i can say i have something worth losing. at least i can say, at the end of a night (no matter what shame but stupor might bring) that i have been fucking alive.