The Beauty of Wasting

There is something to be said about the beauty of wasting away.
The careful angles of skin stretched across bone
And graceful yellow stains painted on blistered fingertips,
A torn-up sunset brightening behind a cracked screen.

Battered hearts still beating faded melodies in sunken chests,
Tired eyes collecting raindrops in the dead of the night.
The silent speckled scars forming, numbing, down the spine
And the beaded clots of red carved and etched in angered lines.

Fading now, hollow faces in the planes of bathroom mirrors.
At a party, intoxicated silhouettes grip onto conscious thought.
Pretty shadows collapsed over ivory toilet bowls, stained
And pretty people, wasting away in explosions of who they could have been.

Psychiatric

It’s quiet out at 9pm.
Wasted sirens and angry machines
Fade into widespread moonlight.
No strings for the weak.
No rest for the poisoned.

A red button on the wall
And a Wi-Fi password
And an aura of dish soap and insides.
Peaceful as I sleep, dizzy as I wake up –
Forever spinning –

Why does it never stop spinning?
Bruises down to my bone
As I drink my weight in water.
A card from my friends
And the look from my teacher as she cries,
For the girl she thought she knew.

Was any of it worth it?
Would I have preferred to see this through?

I Don’t Want You at My Funeral

I don’t want you at my funeral.
Not a public affair, no flowers,
No fancy hearse past my road.
I dare you to throw dirt on my coffin
Like you did my wearied name,
Haunted by the things you said
And did to me without a care.
Do not cry, nor weep,
When you hear the news.
I do not wish for a kind quotation
On a shiny gravestone.
Above all, no speeches:
Do not act, a silly play
In a church full of mourners
Paid in sympathy and tears.
Instead, let this be my grief,
And let all your memories of me fade.
We find the truth in death,
And life is just a passing misery.

Ela Heeley is a contributing writer at The Beaver student newspaper, a self-published fiction author with over 100,000 recorded readers, and a new poet based in London. You can find her on Twitter: @ElaHeeley