First,
quit picking old wounds
and going for walks in the aches
and pains you already made it through–
you call it healing, but
it sounds like a good way
to take a haunting home with you.
LONELY is a no-vacancies sign
for an empty room on the backside
of your chest, and there will never
be enough people to
love that empty out of you.
Love will not save you.
You will save you.
 
Remember,
no matter how much you need
a voice at the other end of the line
who only wants to take care of you,
it is a felony to call 911 just because
you need someone to talk to.
You cannot shrink to radio static,
to heavy breath on a telephone.
Your aching does not end
in an ambulance.
 
Now, breathe.
Yes, I know you’ve heard this one before.
Do it anyway. Got ribs like
the wrong side of a fistfight, yeah?
That’s from the hyperventilating.
Your lungs just survived a car crash
inside of your body.
Be gentle with them, please.
 
Find the pocket of your heartbeat
where you keep forgiveness.
We will try again tomorrow–
I know you’ve got a bone to pick
with tomorrow, but it’s coming anyway.
Listen, in a few hours
our little world will
turn herself right-side-up again,
and you will forget about
all the ways this lonely night
sang you watered down blues and
your hands will start to make sense again.
 
You think you’ve seen every ugly corner
of this whole rotten world, but listen:
there are an infinite number
of things we don’t know and,
statistically speaking,
at least half of them
are probably
very, very beautiful.

POST-PANIC ATTACK by Ashe Vernon

(from my second book, Wrong Side of a Fistfight, available here)

(Source: latenightcornerstore, via queen-of-stupid)