I cannot wait,
until you are as distant a memory
as you used to be.

Fade back into the corner of my mind that glitches and distorts,
piecing you into the closest version of what you actually are,
and not who I’ve seen you to be,

before you are dead to me.

Luciana, 36

Let them,
Leave them,
Keep going the other way.
If any of it matters,
you’ll meet again someday.

Luciana, 36

It’s catching up to me…
The vertigo, insomnia, migraines that don’t dissipate. Close calls of falling from not height at all, because I can’t stand and not sway. My slightly shaky hands when I take a video; the corners of my mind that I no longer know. How I will never be who I was before; the fear that I’m unable to grow into something more.
I wither like a sapling in the shade of an oak, long dead; Stuck inside the pathways of my forever injured head.

Luciana, 36

Living inside a dirty, blue sea-glass bottle,
I wander slowly and bump against the sides.
The only place to go is around – again.
The only thing to do is to repeat what has never worked.
Muffled voices talk at me through the glass.
I respond, they laugh.
Witty as ever, behind the veil that only I can see.

Luciana, 36

Ignore it, deny it, distract it;
This creature that has festerd inside of you for over a decade.
Siphoning off your best to bolster her own strength.
The physical pain that she creates, crawling around the shell of your chest, is palpable every day,
and you gag on her tail curling up into your throat.
There is no oxygen left in the blood that flows through your heart, with all the purpose of a novelty fountain.
This monster now holds your air, your hope, your heart.
And if she didn’t exist anymore, would you?
Nearly symbiotic, if not for her malicious intent.

Luciana, 36

Floating through life I’m a small ball of light,
passing through you like a warm, glowing ghost.
And every bit of warmth you get, I give,
and I drift on, dim and cold.

Luciana, 35

Dreaming, I sit alone in a stadium full of people. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I turn and see you walking down the concrete stairs to my row.
“Come on,” and you move your arms into the brace for a piggy-back.
With no hesitation or care for the destination, I jump onto your back, throwing my arms around your neck like some kind of animal who found its symbiotic counterpart.
We don’t go far, you only carry me up a few rows to a spot where there are two chairs next to each other that no one else seems to notice.

I will sit there forever.

Luciana, Lost

I think you let me see you, like so many never could.
There’s a darkness in the inside that you knew I understood.
And I listened and related and absorbed some of that pain,
and now you’re feeling better,
so I won’t see you again.

Luciana, 36

It wasn’t any safer in the bubble,
clearly it could pop at any time.
But the blindness on the inside was my solace,
in a world where I believed control was mine.

Luciana, 36

A Light glows through
the Clearing,
over the one God Has Set
in the Red Earth.

Luciana, 36

It’s the difference between a man who runs his thumb across your cheek and holds your face before a kiss,
and the one who pulls your hair while sticking his tongue down your throat.

The difference between feeling the warmth in someone’s eyes when they look at you,
and hearing the word “Fuuuuccckkk” hissed into your ear, endlessly.

It’s a choice to believe that there is someone out there who will see you for all that you are,
amidst a reality plagued with prodding, pushing, pulling, pounding and discarding.

Luciana, 36

I will always love you,
and no one can make me stop.
No coaxing from this nightmare,
when I’d rather not.

Call it complex, misguided grief,
a trauma bond with a ghost.
You deserve to be remembered,
and loved,
while you decompose.

Luciana, 36

No air
Dry mouth
Fuzzy teeth
Fight/Flight/Freeze
Chest in flames
Unblinking, stare at the ground until it all goes
Away Away Away

Luciana, 36

You didn’t go far, but you tried to get away,
from everything you left behind in June, 2008.
She’s in the road, upside down, she bled out…
and in Chicago lives the rest of whatever you became.

Luciana, 36

The white noise in my head is a constant scream.
A clash between the need to chase potential
and immediately manifest unachieved dreams.
The rest only craves existence and survival.

What I still don’t know is if the screamer is me,
or everything I’m supposed to be.

Luciana, 35

I’m the star in the sky that won’t burn out,
The light in the maiden that glows through the clouds,
A faraway, sparkling phenomenon,
that you can no longer wish upon.

Luciana, 35

Your short legacy is the full stop of my sanity,
every memory stored carefully is good. 
Not a mean bone in your body, though they all broke in the end,
and now you live un-broken as a God in my head.

Luciana, 35

You’re past the point of magic, and all the butterflies in your chest have died and turned to dust. With these hollowed insides, you wade around murky, rotting waters looking for that “catch,” with nothing left to find but slippery monsters covered in film sliding around your feet.

Luciana, 35

Can you get any lower? I wonder,
“Can you talk any slower?” out loud.
The difference between what’s in my mind, and what is ‘life’ is a thin line,
and everything’s lost in a cloud.

“You’re not who I thought you’d be,” she says
to herself in the mirror, but who is?
People find themselves different, and better; Not failing and falling faster,
into a trash compactor abyss.

Crush me with the rest of the garbage,
compact me down under the clay.
Or recycle these thoughts into something new,
so that I can be better someday.

Luciana, 35

Am I the sleeper? 8 hours a day.
Or does it all count when I am awake?
The worker, the admin, the Chicagoan…

Or am I the substance,
my glowing bright mind?
The Survivor,
The Writer,
The Dream?

Luciana, 35

In a world that made sense,
There was a moment between everything that should have been,
and the reality of everything that is not.

Living inside a life that feels accidental,
I am stuck between becoming something else,
and entirely nothing at all.

Luciana, 35

Another blank page,
Another quiet winter day.
There is no quick fix,
No bailout…
And the other shoe always, always drops,
When does it stop?

Luciana, 35

Feeling left out of your own life, behind observation glass watching someone fail to live up to a basic standard of living, no giving and taking, just being taken from, who’s this shell of a human that you have become?

Nothing left to be scared of, the nightmare is you. Greasy and tired, lethargic and wired,
shut off from the world in a little room writing about becoming something you know isn’t good.

Who else sees you this way? Who else matters?
The introspection of depression is understatedly skewed, beyond all reason, beyond the point, when you’re on the outside looking in on you.

Luciana, 35

Mild
Moderate
Severe

Sinking slowly in a sea of dark blue,
motionless, without fear,
How am I here again?
All the way down to the bottom.
Breathe in, and the water flows down your throat,
swirling around your still heart.

Luciana, 35

The password changes when I’ve had enough.
Your Frustration is palpable as old tricks fail,
three strikes,
and you’ve been locked out for good.

Losing yourself in the care of others who only take leads to one conclusion;
It’s you, or them.

Incorrect password
No attempts remaining

Luciana, 35

When you stop being afraid, you start to see the fear in other things;
How small and fragile spiders are,
with their clear skin and runner’s stance.
That, “Oh fuck,” look they give you with all eight of their eyes,
when you spot one another.
What on earth was I ever thinking they could do to me?

For the rest of my life I will only ever set them down gently, back outside,
in an attempt to repent for every time that I didn’t.

Luciana, 34

It’s never too late to be what you might have been
and this is the end of who I was.
Walls crumble away and nothing remains,
of the prison built to capture the pain.
Hanging on tightly to what was long gone,
it took fifteen years to learn how
to let go,
to grow up,
to get up, and move on.

Luciana, 34
(George Elliot, 1819 – 1880)

Something is broken in your mind…
Searching in vain for that extinguished light,
that will lead you back to the rest of your life.
To the person, the book, the success, the dream;
GIVE ME THE PAST is all you can scream.

Luciana, 34

Lucy’s the main character, she’s so alive!
Not quite thriving, she’s barely surviving.
Paycheck to paycheck, person to person,
big secrets, white lies,
huge smiles, loud cries,
dark-hearted drama queen; somehow she thrives,
that’s what makes her interesting.

Luciana, 34

What doesn’t kill you, just won’t kill you,
cannot kill you for awhile.
You’re alive behind the rotting of your soul and of your smile.
The blood inside your heart is rendered stale and out of breath,
The muscles at the corners of your mouth have no strength left.
Witty words choke in your throat, and every crutch is gone,
But wait, you get to learn from this, another life lesson!
With another slimy lesson in the slurry of your gut,
Whatever doesn’t kill you makes this existence a rough one.

Luciana, 34

The attention you want is temporary
a flash in the pan that tastes burnt on your tongue
it would hurt if you cared more, about them, about you
as your chest caves in on your heart and lungs

Beyond the lonely and into alone
untethered thoughts and robotic response
Into the black and lost to the blue
it’s almost over, but never quite done.

Luciana, 34

It’s been fourteen years of an unexpected spring,
made of days where you’ve felt like you haven’t earned the time,
with that dark, silent void in the forefront of your mind;
It wasn’t bad at all, but it was nothing close to life.

Luciana, 34

A crush is killed off with a few thoughtless words, dissolving on the phone, through your mind and into the air.
So easy to have perspective on something that wasn’t ever really there.

Luciana, 34

If a tree falls in the woods, does anyone hear it?
No? Who cares? It doesn’t matter to me.
Until I am the tree, I am down,
I have fallen without a sound.
Now I rot on my side in irony,
while people nature-walking step on,
around,
and all over me.

Luciana, 34

Spying something shiny on the ground, you kneel down to see, thinking what a special find! One of a kind, revealing itself to me!

Upon closer inspection it’s a piece of common trash. Broken, sharp and dirty, smells like old beer bottle glass.

Your only purpose pausing is to chuck it in the bin, to ensure it’s nasty, trashy shine won’t stop someone again.

Luciana, 33

I roll the window down and hold my hand out into the night;
reaching for the wind that glides through my fingers.
The shadow of what I wish was a ghost,
is only night air on my palm in the dark.

Luciana, 33

Never forget that no one thinks of you
The way you think they do, you’re an afterthought.
People think about themselves a lot,
and of what others think, even though they’re not.

Luciana, 33

Who reads this when I don’t post?
The short stats bar tracks a lone ghost
No rhymes for the recent, at least nothing half decent
Events not worth sharing; I slowly stop caring
My graveyard of thoughts is less than inviting
What’s up, reader? How did you find me?

Luciana, 32

Let’s meet in the dark and drive out on your golf cart, on the grass in silence, laughing in defiance at the finite reality that separates you from me, and it’s so dark that we can’t see, or won’t believe, that it’s only me, wandering in a pipe dream where you’re right here, next to me laughing and existing, briefly…

Luciana, 32

I knew to watch until you were gone;
The rolling stop of a black Honda around the corner was final moment of your life in my life.

The formal farewell that followed
decimated that quiet ride into the sunset;

A coming of age story wrapped in a horror show.

Luciana, 32

A constant stream of Peter Pans
floods this windy Neverland
pretending that “adulting”
is the same as Adult Man

He’s so busy, he’s not sorry
every moment is a joke
On a journey with his bros,
it’s so sick, he’s so woke

Time passes all the same
while he stunts his inner growth
despite a lifetime of avoidance,
on the outside, Pan’s a man

Trapped inside an aging shell,
that is now his living hell

Luciana, 32

I am here to steal your dreams,
lagging and lazy, you settle for less.
Ambition fading, you become one of the rest,
while I live out your days that would have been best.

I will set on my shelves what you never earned,
Explore places you never knew existed,
Know myself more than you’ll ever know you,
Succeed, while you rot in a lack of resistance.

Longingly look back lamenting all you didn’t do,
and know that everything got done,
my Me, and not by you.

Luciana, 32

Thought out
Pushed send
Left on read
Left un-dead

More to say?
LEAVE UNSAID
Otherwise,
Desperate

Fuck this
Fuck texts
What happened to
My confidence?

Blinking dots,
a dumb reply
Response from me
IDK why

Thoughts, text
To what end?
DING, read
Grimace, send

I remember
times before
calls and voicemails
knocks on doors

AOL and MSN
Locker notes with neon pens
Show up, face to face,
No chance for a ghost escape

No LOL
No endless wait
No end in sight
No empty light

FML
This sightless stare,
Fuck these texts
Modern nightmare.

Luciana, 32

The alarm sounds and my eyelids slowly un-peel. I reach for a tiny axe on the nightstand, open the door to my chest and listen for the quiet beat in the dark. I slam the axe as hard as I can, straight down the middle of my heart, and feel the fracture spread like a virus.

Broken, bleeding fragments clatter down the insides of my ribcage, coming to rest in a mangled, dysfunctional pile in the pit of my stomach.

When the last piece falls, I close the door, wipe the blood off the little axe, and set it back on the nightstand. With a sufficiently shattered heart, I stand up out of bed. Ready to face another day where no one else has a chance at it.

Luciana, 31

In a floating frame, between two panes,
is the inside cover of a CD,
stained with gasoline, small shards of glass,
and a dense, dark puddle of me.

Viva la Vida, ironically,
fills the gaps in my memory.
This macabre reminder framed on the wall,
grounds the crash in reality.

Luciana, 31

One and one is two,
and you and me were us
Then one was done, and two was one
and us was me so rapidly…

But you not a one, you’re a ZERO
And one minus zero is one
I’m still me, who gives a fuck
if a zero decides to be done

Luciana, 31

Pop the little blue pill and flatten the tires of your racing thoughts with road spikes.
Cram your heart inside a glass bottle and throw it into a slosh of stomach bile.
Lower your eyelids like window shades.
Let your face melt into vacancy, like the facade of a historical building that has been gutted on the inside, retaining the look of a functioning residence on the outside.

Luciana, 31

Clothes cover ripped skin, hide broken bones,
Wax fills in his face, irreparably smashed.
Glue holds his eyes and mouth tightly closed,
in excess, dry and crystallized on eyelashes.

Why couldn’t we have gathered around the car,
the body left inside in the way that he died
and have see the truth of the end of a life,
instead of this morbid, disgusting disguise?

Or nothing at all, no memorial,
his name never mentioned again.
As if he could show up again, someday,
and it would not have been then end.

Luciana, 31

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, is a lie.

What doesn’t kill you, instead lays a thick layer of tar down your insides, suffocating all hope and function from foresight.
Nothing remains but a shell.

The only truth is that some things are worth having, and losing, and not quite killing you. 

Luciana, 31