#raye halabuza

[rotinmycore]

[rotinmycore]

I hold onto it

Hold on hold on

I'm scared to let it go.

Scared

To let you go.

I've been wondering if I can just stay here

If I can make this purgatory my home

The game I've known all my life

Passed on from my mother

When my father left.

To watch something slip through your fingers

Something that shouldn't

Something that has skin and warmth and tangibility

Now disintegrating

Now becoming dirt

Now something it never should have been.

How can love decay?

How can these feelings just go away?

There are holes growing across my skin from where you touched

I'm swallowed in sorrow

It makes me wonder

How much longer it will take

Until I am only a hole of a person who once lived here.

Lived in the cottage of your heart

Lived in the sun that basked along my cheeks just with your gaze

Lived in heaven.

Time drags on

I am just here

And here

And here.

I'm still waiting

And by the day I'm hating myself for it.

I'm still here

Are you still here?

Are you still listening?

Are you still the person you were when you left?

Am I?

[rotinmycore]

I’ve been told I’m not a good enough girl

I’m not doing this thing properly.

“Such a pretty thing to go to waste”

I take pride in all that’s ugly.

Wait for them to judge me

And I’ll smile knowing I’m not living a lie like the rest of them.

Bones hang from my ceiling

They sway with my ceiling fan.

My fingers mold

My body is a girlish suit for you to twist to fit whatever fantasy you live in

Would blood help fix it?

I’m not something to flaunt over

I’m not something you can place in a box and leave me.

I’m trapped in this bubble you call normalcy

I want to bite the edges

I want to rip my own throat out and eat it.

I scream but your hand is over my mouth

I can taste your skin in my teeth.

I push through to be seen

I push myself so hard my legs want to give out

But I have run my whole life

I know I can handle this as well.

Suck it up

Swallow the rage and smile wide

Clench teeth

I will sit here and stay and wait for you not to look.

Look away

Please

Please look away and let me be everything I’m meant to be.

Stop trying to tame me when I was never meant to be an inside animal.

My body wants to morph

The woods are calling me back

The ground wishes to reach for me and drag me back down

And please

I’m begging you

Let it take me this time.

— I was never meant to kneel, I was never meant to pray to something not there, I was never meant to be cleansed. They saw me wandering on the side of the road and instead of letting me be, they thought they could save me. I didn’t need to be saved, I just needed to be free.

[rotinmycore]

I never wanted to love you this way

Yet

Here we are.

Or rather

Here

I

Am.

I am a visitor in my own body

Though as the days pass

I am becoming more and more unwanted.

I’m doing things I wouldn’t normally do

Acting in abandon

I paw at your door at night

I just want you to let me in.

Turn the porch light off

I’m out in the dark again

It’s become my home.

I told myself it wouldn’t happen with you

I wouldn’t abandon myself like last time

Give up my own wants

Just to cater to yours.

My own identity warping to yours

Scribble your name into my heart like tree bark

A sign on property

That I never asked for.

I don’t know who’s in control

It’s supposed to be me

But when I look in the mirror

Another version stares back.

Ripping myself apart

Before you do.

The air is hard to breathe out here

I’m starting to get scared.

Can you please just let me in?

If I tell you all you want to hear

Will that be enough?

Be enough to love me the way I want you to?

Will it be enough

For me to love you the way you want to be loved?

My head is a whirlwind

I think I close my eyes to the night

Yet I open and it’s day

It has always been day.

I don’t know what time it is

What day

What year.

All I know

Is that I’m here with you

And I love you so

So

So

Much.

I love you more than myself

I love you more than the person who brought me here

I love you as I tear my skin and bury my flesh and destroy my limbs so I will never be able to leave.

And I will love you until I finally wake up

Peer at the wreckage that is this body

And scream in sorrow

Despair and grief

For the loss of my autonomy

That perhaps

Was never mine to begin with.

[rotinmycore]

Move on

They tell me like it’s that simple

Like I can close my eyes and sleep at night.

Like it’s something I can choose and switch my mind off like a lamp.

But the lights are on

There’s never been a switch

And I’m peering through my eyes like curtains just waiting for the next thing to happen.

For him to knock on my door

For his truck to drive by

To leave a rusted hand print along my body

And thank him this time instead of scream no.

Some days I close my eyes and I’m back on that street

Back on that jagged sidewalk next to that stop sign

And he’s parked there

Windows down

And he’s only staring.

Staring at me to do something

Staring at me to run.

Chase me down in exhaust

Cover my mouth in weeds

Force them down my throat while my chest collapses.

Day by day I cave

And day be day

I try to rebuild.

I have rebuilt

Because years will pass and I feel nothing

Until the anniversary rings the bell of the church

And my crying hymns from that night clog my throat

While the choir of tears come swaying back.

— there’s a seed you placed inside me that night, and day after day I’ve nurtured it with poison thinking I’m killing it. And now? Now it’s grown into a flower of anger with thorns as petals, and whenever someone gets near me I hurt them thinking it’s you all over again.

[rotinmycore]

The fever is gone

The dream is over.

And it’s funny

Because I never knew it was a dream in the first place

Until it ended.

[rotinmycore]

Can I tell you something and can you not get mad at me?

I don’t know what’s happening

I don’t know what this means.

Days turn to weeks

Weeks to months to years

I’m still that girl on the floor

Still bleeding

Still confused.

I said yeah but not like that

It went all wrong.

Has it been a day?

Has it been five years?

Am I one-hundred yet

Or have I aged backwards.

That’s what it feels like now.

I crave the kind of safety I once knew

The kind that was in words and hugs but now it feels like you’re too close

Like everyone is too close

I can’t breathe

Don’t look at me like that

Don’t touch me

Don’t talk about that subject.

Why didn’t you stop when I said it?

Why do I leave the room when others bring it up

Why do I hate using the word?

It’s gross and it hurts and suddenly you are all over me

Inside of me and I can’t get you out.

It was so easy for you to leave me

But there’s something inside and it’s been here since that day.

I want to scrape my insides out

I need to rid myself of the poison you left behind.

I have worked so hard for what—

For it to happen again?

I want to be myself again.

I want to feel only myself

And not you.

I want to be me without the tears

I want to have my heart back instead of this black hole it’s become

Sucking what I once loved into nothingness.

I look in the mirror and soon I’m scared all that will be left is that hole

Staring back into the void.

The stars have disappeared

The nights grow longer

I’m floating in space

I just want to fall.

And fall

Fall into something

Fall into anything

Everything

Nothing.

Can you give the part back you took that night?

Can you just tell me why

Can you just give me my eyes back

So I can finally see?

Can you apologize

Can you tell me you forgive me?

I’m sorry

Sorry

Sorry for saying what I didn’t mean

Sorry for giving the wrong idea.

Sorry sorry sorry—

That’s a funny word—

Sorry sorry sorry—

It doesn’t mean what it’s suppose to—

Sorry sorry sorry—

Do you hate me?

Do I hate you?

Does hate exist in a world that hates itself?

Does it cancel out

Do we hold too much for it to go on?

Did I mean anything to you?

Sorry sorry sorry—

Now

I’ll ask again;

Are you mad?

Is this what you wanted to hear?

— I still don’t want to use that word.

[rotinmycore]

This page is a blur, like we so easily have become. These words bleed and cry and they hold the knife that dully, slowly, rips the wound open. The wound I thought healed with you, with this love I could hold and break down to and never had to question if you were there. But now? Now, where did you go? Why is this room so cold? So dark, so haunted, so much the same. Why is your face a blank? Why am I trying to reach you and why are your hands turning to dust? I guess this meant more to me than it ever did for you. Why does this hurt so damn much? Why am I forever the one who grapples with this?

— though maybe these questions are life-long mysteries, that will never have a conclusion.