Wooden Floorboards

I have these voices in my brain
And I created them and I hate them
But I ask them to stay
'Cause I have this fixation on death
This fixation on change
This fixation on three years I grew out of pain
This fixation on sleep
This fixation on you and on me
But who could I be?
I spent three years writing poems
About a fixation on the past
And she told me it was worth it
Because she told me it would last

But darling, I'll hold my tongue as I hold you tight
'Cause forgetting what you think love means
Is my sleeping pill every night
I remember when you woke up and screamed
"Maybe our love is just laced with LSD
'Cause darling, I'm high on life
And you're just high on me"

And as I tried my best to read between the lines
Your lips shaped words I tried to interpret as lies
Only to see the devil hiding deep inside the details
As Lucifer found his way back into retail, my dear
He sold us a product we didn't want to buy
But we weren't trying to be original
We were just trying to survive

The voices in my brain telling me it's all in my head
And I will sleep with one eye open
But I won't sleep until I'm dead
'Cause a fair assessment of a existence
Is an inconsistent realist vision of selfish antics
Reduced to survival of the fittest defined by our ability
To avoid those carrying any sickness

And these whispers in my head intensify to raspy screams
Asking when my skull will explode so they can breathe
They know that no one has a voice when no one is listening
And the violent riot of staying silent or quiet is torturous
To those who need to hear something
And that violence has its own sort of beauty

And you are my beauty, and you're my violent smile
And you are my violent prayer, and you're not my oxygen
But I breathe your air

'Cause these voices in my brain remind me of past mistakes
The beauty I found of being able to say
"Look what I went through, I survived"
But is survival living?
Or is survival just a placeholder for a vacant mind
To cut off the threat to coincide with the soil
While their blood boils?

'Cause my biggest fear was never facing death
Or even facing what happens after
My biggest fear was never facing anything like that
My biggest fear was waking up in that coffin
With these voices chanting a chorus of remorse
A forced abort from the course I had chosen

And now I'm laying here, frozen with fear
Staring up at a splintering slab of wood
Paid for with my life savings, buried beneath the earth
That grew the weeds that poisoned my family's feet
What if I woke up, walked back home
And it was like nothing had happened?

"We left your room the way you left it
We just scrubbed the bloodstains out of the carpet
We just rubbed the mud remains out of your pockets
We just dubbed the tough claims out of your sonnets
We just evacuated your room and hoped you would too
But your spirit haunted it too long, so we boarded it up
Moved along and watched it become a guest room
A place for the non-permanent inhabitants to exist
Within this home we created to raise our kid"

That was my biggest fear
Finding out something like that would happen
'Cause the memories that have come with this
Only cause everything else to hurt
Deep inside of this dismissed feeling I feel

But sometimes, you have to face the past
And maybe I've never faced death
But if I were to walk away then, what would I be?
These voices in my head, what would they say?
And what would they see?

Did I survive or am I cursed?
Did I die or did I learn?
What if I woke up like nothing happened?
What if I never wake up?
My dear, then what's my purpose?
What if I woke up like nothing happened?
And darling, darling, what if you woke up, too?