your hands shake when you pass the sugar and the pictures you take always come out a little blurrier than you intend to 

 you like to watch people through the window and think about where they’ve been who they’ve loved why they hurt

your smoke swirls out words you tried to gather up the urge to speak a long time ago and you drink quick enough to never try again at all

there is a tombstone somewhere in a graveyard with somebody’s name on it and a familiar date

there is a flower planted in somebody’s backyard with the seeds of a memory known all too well

there is a handprint painted on too many bodies with blood everybody knows will never wash away

no wonder your hands shake

when he laughs at the dinner table your hands shake over a graveyard of lives you never lived

when somebody laughs outside your window you think about if they cry when they pick flowers and if it hurts as much to say goodnight

when you’re the only one laughing in the room, drunk and high and buried somewhere in a graveyard, you see the blood, its yours and its never coming out

no wonder your hands shake

no wonder you can’t eat without filling up your mouth, you’re only ever used to having someone else’s fingers shoving down your throat

no wonder you can never sleep without the sound of human breath, you’re only ever used to someone taking your relief to use it for your own

no wonder you can never go anywhere without having to catch your breath, you’re only ever used to holding yours so you don’t have to think about the hands of someone else

do they know that the grave is why your fingernails are so dead, do they know you dug yourself out of it with your bare limbs

do they know that picking flowers is like your salvation, do they know it makes you feel like your saving yourself all over again

do they know that hands are always the first sign for if somebody’s gonna hurt you, do they know that someone else’s put you in the ground, do they know that the last time you saw somebody’s hands up close, they were burying you alive

no wonder your hands shake

how else will you remember you’re not dead