sometimes my lungs flood with tragedy

sometimes my ribs rot and collapse, cave in

to the cavity of a hollow heart

carved out

by those sickly, sugared love songs.

this sweet-tooth of mine

will be my death.

if i’m not gone already, that is-

sometimes i like to imagine that i am

just a ghost glimpsing through the veil,

a visitor in a life,

a golden, lost body,

that isn’t mine.

that would explain a lot,

i think.

the absence

the disconnect

but no;

this was not a murder, but a metamorphosis.

i can see the sculpture of my skin

outlined in the suffocating heat,

buzzing in the thick air.

shoulders weary,

head down. i can hear the echoes

of my past self,

he shadows me as i move through

these fields, these halls, these echoes

of her, shaking through

my life, causing tremors,

ripples,

through the flow of reality.

he hesitates

when i pass you.

that sweet smile of yours,

my undoing.

sometimes i unravel when the sun casts its gold against these tile floors

sometimes when it hurls itself across the classroom walls,

across my skin,

my hands,

my fourteen-year-old eyes.

my maybe fourteen-year-old eyes.

sometimes i feel that,

this fourteen.

sleepless,

shining,

sweet-toothed fourteen.

sometimes i feel more than that,

or less;

thoughts that are not mine,

feelings that i have no right to.

still,

this is a fourteen years body

filling with love,

with pain,

loss leaking through my pupils.

sometimes this sweet-tooth of mine leaves me

rotting

to the core.

sickness in the midday glory, these dandelions

watered by my weeping. these footsteps in the grass halt;

i am flying above the storm clouds.

this sulphur eye of the hurricane,

this moment of almost-peace.

this is not how my story will end.

this is not when.

i refuse to be another teenage tragedy.

i won’t fall in love with this honeycombed, sun-speckled

syrup-steeped, poisoned, perfect, horrible

image of youth.

i won’t fall in love with you.

APOLLO X. SMITH

(@boyeternal on instagram. feel free to suggest edits, and thank you thank you thank you for reading.)

#trans #poetry #boy