It is too easy to make affliction handsome
When it's lined with rhyme
Traced by thin fingers
The numb glow of a dawn window.
White drapes on skin and glass
Dark eyes torn with pain made
Beautiful
In the lighting we chose.

Peculiar how artificial lighting

Is sometimes what looks at us

most natural

Definitive of the place we try to convince ourselves

It is.
 

In fact the glow of a lightbulb is

Not flattering.

The caress of sunlight

A perfect intensity behind closed blinds

Does not cover the stench

Of fevered sweat and human ache.
 

I guess even that can sound nice

When I tenderly stroke my own quivering cheek

Crying? Don’t be ridiculous.

I thought I wasn’t supposed to look pretty like this.
 

How come I can never look away

From my own torn face

When it is choking on truth?
 

I'll laugh about it later.

My pillow remembers the smell

Of tears, brushed away by ink.
 

Gloss. We paint our wounds in thick blues and grays

What reflects best. This angle

that light.

My mirror is cracked but I never was
 

Superstitious.

I suppose it's a way to cope.
 

We cannot bear the dirtying carpet

Plastic, a label, reminding me

That everything I own

Is a replica
 

Interruptions.

God

Do not interrupt my daydream

It is how I pretend that this

Distasteful ordinary issue

Is a grievous struggle

Worthy of internal storms
 

I tuck it in my pocket. The words

I use to wrap my burdens.
 

Is it beautiful? The way we

Make things graceful in their ugliness.

Glorify dirt on museum floors

Blood on cracked lips.

It is

no longer pretend

 

If I believe it to be true for long enough
 

It is sick. Disgusting.

These pretty poems.