You Were So Tired You Were So Tired You Were So Tired

By Katherine Walker

The last time I heard your voice, The conversation was twenty years too short.

I said hello like I would be able to say it on my wedding day. You said hello like you only had five days left.

I told you the weather had been good here the past week. You hadn't been outside in just as long.

You told me my mom had just left to get some coffee. I knew you would be gone the next time I saw her.

You fell asleep on the phone with me. I don't think you heard me say goodbye.

nine hundred and ninety-nine deaths nine hundred and ninety-nine deaths nine hundred and ninety-nine deaths

By Adam Bento

I travelled long distances to see them

I walked endless flights of stairs

I stepped over volcanic coals

I killed Lions protecting their cubs

I cried over my nine hundred and ninety-nine deaths

Their thrones were golden and white

Their looks were stern and unwelcoming

I thought my nine hundred and ninety-nine deaths were for something

Instead Aidos greeted me with my thousandth death

Overdosing Overdosing Overdosing

By Claudia Kindrachuk

I got too high when I was with you. I remember one day, my skeleton tried to rip its way out of my flesh. You had me diving for scraps, throwing me a bone every now and then, so I wanted to give you all of mine. When I retreated to my nondescript bed, I slept naked with the door unlocked in the hopes you’d slip inside and I could pull your insides out. I remember when I tried to kill myself in that room I locked the door, even though I knew my body would start to smell eventually. Whether I wanted to let you in or keep you out, it was all rot. I remember one day, you asked if I was a Capricorn and I spent three weeks wondering what that meant. In the sex dream I woke from in a cold sweat, you looked different but I knew it was you. In my waking life, just your touch on my thigh made us both scream in terror, and an indirect kiss from smoking my cigarette made you spray-paint vomit all over your bed. I’m still afraid of the perfume you said was hot, but I can’t bring myself to buy something else. I’m still digging my nails into you. I guess I could blame the smoke, or the pills, or the one line I did to impress you at that stupid party, but all the drugs don’t add up to what I became. The gasoline was always there you just dropped the match. And I’ll burn forever because of you. I guess what I’m trying to say is, you broke my heart because you were the one person I thought I was safe from. You found a key I’d long since stopped looking for and opened all my worst doors. I think it was on purpose. I’ll never know for sure, but sometimes I think if I saw you on the street, I’d grab you and shake you and yell, I was overdosing and you could tell.