The only empathy I have is for art

The only empathy I have is for art - 

The way paint mourns across canvas, 

The way music shatters without breaking - 

Not for voices trembling in the cold,

Not for hands that reach, not for hearts I hold.

The world is a Hollow thing,

Only the ghosts in paint and ink, 

Only the stories never needed saving.

To be alive is to be chaos untamed, 

A curse of fangs and silver, unnamed, 

A fire with no hearth, an act of slowburn;

I enjoyed punishing myself with words

Letting my thoughts bloom like wild thorns, 

My ideas scented with asylum's air,

Ghosts in the halls, but no one there.

My finger aches from pressing silence into my lips

Building castles with words I don't say

To tear them down till there's nothing left.

I devote myself to art - 

To bleeding without breaking,

To burning without turning to ash; 

Bury me deep in the arms of the sun

Where days unspool and come undone,

Let the colours swallow me whole

For you are alive while you still create,

While you still dream, while you still ache; 

An ocean of salt and stars spills from my hands,

A love so deep, a loss commands;

If passion must burn, if beauty must cry,

Then let me choke in the ocean of why.