thinking too much too late

[twinnedpeaks]

from a project i’m working on (my doctor wants me to write about my life to remember some trauma and shit) 

[wokeuplateagain]

Don’t tell me it made me stronger

Or else pay for my therapy, we’ll see then

Cause being strong means nothing when

You’re a child who could use some saving

Now look at me, tough as nails and built like

A dandelion, I shake when the storms roll in

Like a goddamned chihuahua, and if I cry one more time

Because a psa reminded me of when

I called poison control for myself, knees weak,

I’ll snap

And suddenly I’m crying in my nutrition class

Avoiding eye contact. How do you explain that?

A sure strong thing I am. I walk like a kid without a hallway pass

Always checking over my shoulder and waiting

For something that will never come. The rain

Slows down, stops, I hold still best I can and

Pretend that being strong means I don’t feel pain

[wokeuplateagain]

You smeared cake down the side of my face

Don’t think I don’t remember, it was after

My seventeenth birthday, we ran around

Screaming in the old barn, hanging from the rafters

You told me growing old was for people who

had already found love, and ‘oh god is that a gray hair’

‘No, oh my god I’ll kill you’ or maybe just marry you

And I started thinking, I wouldn’t mind us

With wrinkles, fading like old pictures, somewhere

In the south, so our old bones stay warm, for now you push me

Take off running someplace, and god I can’t wait to meet you there

[wokeuplateagain]

I found absence

In the directory for the school

I found absence in the back left pocket

Of my favorite jeans.

I found absence

In every calendar year that you did not

Walk besides me on the way to lunch.

I found absence in my chest

Thick as cough syrup and twice as bitter

When you found something in New Orleans

That wasn’t in my right hand,

Which you used to hold.

[wokeuplateagain]

I wonder what kind of monster I am. I use people for physical touch, soak up their affection until I can breathe again, and then wait for it to all fall apart. Some kind of succubus. I learned how to take love where I could get it when I couldn’t substitute it for self hate and daydreams.

I used to tell myself little bedtime stories like, ‘once upon a time, you felt truly loved and safe’ or, ‘in a land, far, far away, someone understood you.’ They made me feel a little less alone. Like maybe in some parallel universe I was okay, and maybe that was enough.

I know platonic love like the back of my hand. When I have the energy I guess. But I don’t know how to explain, I didn’t learn how to like myself for seventeen years. It takes a while to establish that I do care. I promise. I’m just really bad at showing it. Maybe that’s the worst crime of all. I’ll slip love letters into birthday cards until someone reads over my shoulder and tells me it’s wrong. I’ll love ferociously until I’m reminded it’s too much. I’m a heart drawn in extremes. The strings inside are pulled tight until I swear to god I feel something in my chest snap and I slump over against the steering wheel.

I know it’ll get better. Someday the guilt won’t scald like flames licking at my feet. Someday my body won’t ache like I’m stretched out on a pyre. This is love, this is no witch trial. Someday I’ll know how to wade in slowly. Someday I won’t just burn out. It’s that kind of thing that helps me keep pushing. Sending that ‘I love you’ and sometimes not if it isn’t true. And that’s alright. Parallel universe me would be proud.

[wokeuplateagain]

I liked it though. I liked giving them my body and being so so distant. Letting them be enamored, letting them take and take, and feel so good. I’d give a small smile and a few words of encouragement. It gave me time to think about more important things, like needing to buy more bath soap, and that I should check when my books from the library were coming in.

Once, while a boy had his face buried in my neck, I wondered if I was broken. Completely unaffected.

A girl once said, ‘maybe I feel this way because it’s real love’

My heart broke because I knew I didn’t love her. I didn’t want to hurt her, I just couldn’t hang on to the idea that I’d surrender myself like that.

I didn’t understand myself. I could play the part, buy flowers and hold doors and remember dates. I just couldn’t. Feel. A. Damn. Thing.

I can’t remember what it felt like to think I was in love.

I want to ask what it’s like.

[wokeuplateagain]

why do you take from me like you think i can take it. why do you break me in to pieces just to swallow me whole. am i more manageable that way? do i taste sweeter and less like blood? i need you to tell me so i can have closure. these cuts won’t close and neither will my eyes. i’ve got fingerprint shaped scars on the back of my neck. you walk on your toes but i can still hear your breath. we’re a puzzle with missing pieces. we’re an imperfect fit. the day you left you never said goodbye. you just raised your hand, and i’m still waiting for the hit.

[wokeuplateagain]

I was depressed. I was being held hostage at the bottom of a black ocean. I saw dark things swim there, they told me to do terrible things. They showed me the ships on the surface, crashing and burning and sinking. I watched the mermaids carry away men and screaming souls. I was taught I could be screaming too.

The sweet sea creatures, so black they devoured light, they lit fires on the inside of my skin. I tried to cut them out, stop the burning, but I was only left with red and the scent of burning flesh. I have a barcode of all my past lives encoded on the inside of both wrists. White lies and white lines cover most of my unseen body.

Sometimes I split into wisps, caught in currents and pulled from my skull. I watch my body sway like too much seaweed. I want to go home but this is where I’ve lived for so long that I’ve forgotten the taste of freshwater. Everything is hazy and too many colors that shouldn’t exist here. Maybe this isn’t real. Maybe I’m back at the kitchen table and the voice is my mothers and I’m not going anyplace nice there either.

Sycophantic smiles and a laugh like broken seashells, my monsters pull me apart. They tear a child from my chest and teach it how to cry softly. I am weeping for a person I’ll never know. They laugh louder. Tiny crystals hit the ocean floor and break into sand. My hands are cut with diamond. My hands are red and the ocean is so full of sharks.

Tall shadows throw themselves around like echoes. They shape themselves around me like a shield and then shrink. I am safe from all but the dark. It closes in and I am strangled by fishnets and intentions. I go blue in the face and beg to a god called Mercy, who has no ears or eyes.

A fisherman casts his hook into the water. It drifts by slowly. A little worm writhes with too much hope, moments before gaping mouth and bitter end. I wonder if I’ll reach the surface. I wonder if I am bait for something worse. I wonder if I will see gaping mouth and bitter end if then, this all will finally stop

[wokeuplateagain]

I’ve been taking sleeping pills a lot lately. A mild sedative is all they really are. I still feel it, that rush of adrenaline when I close my eyes, but now it’s fighting a force stronger than what I could put out.

My knees and elbows are sewn together, I go limp like a rag doll, hang over an armchair. I disappear into the white noise of this house. No one even knows I’m there.

I cant hurt anyone if I have no energy. I cant do anything at all. I just curl up like a cat, slow lazy blinks and too many commas in my out-loud sentences. Oh it’s so nice to lay still, be small.

[wokeuplateagain]

Teach me to be only a breath. Under this sky I have no scent. I am a trace existence, unfolded by the hands of time. Even when my name is only the sound of a pendulum swinging, teach me to be less. If I am the minute hand of a stop watch, teach me to dissolve backwards into the gears. I was only right twice a day anyways. I don’t want to leave anything behind, I want float by without ever touching the ground. Make me ashes and toss me out with the coals. Don’t let them write my name in any books. I have five things I’m called by and I haven’t told a soul. If I will be a ghost then let me start now. Let me be an exhale. Let me lose every trace of myself. Teach me, please teach me to be less.

[wokeuplateagain]

Kiss me and tell me I taste lime green. Pull all the tendons in my arms and put me on, puppet show. Make my teeth ache. Tell me sickness is a warm feeling. Leave me cold with all your words. It’ll move me faster that way.

[wokeuplateagain]

We wear our fathers shoes but take on the burdens of our mothers. Our first home and the last when we’ve lost every other. You were the voice inside my head. You were someone I trusted.

I’ve given you the pieces of me, scattered bits of apprehension, told you how I feel about my friends. Asked you to listen. You were someone I trusted.

But I’ve forgotten how much time I’ve spent here, washed out and full of that small-scared feeling that you taught me. I don’t raise my voice. I don’t whisper. I don’t speak. I hide in bathrooms and mid-nights when I weep. You were someone I trusted.

You were someone who shaped me, taught me how to read people, gave me empathy. Taught me timidness and acquiescence. Told me my friends were liars and untrustworthy. You were someone I trusted.

You taught me how to tiptoe and fade into sidewalk chalk drawings. How to not be there but be there all the same. Never sit still, never be stupid, a dumb baby playing pretend. You told me I was unmotivated but gifted. You were someone I trusted.

You taught me how to be a whisper when you needed to be a shout. You taught me how to shake and bend. You taught me how to lose my friends. You told me I didn’t need anyone. You taught me that our mothers are who we become. You told me I shouldn’t have children. You taught me that no one can really be trusted.

[wokeuplateagain]

we were born in a dark city. you knew the secrets, the slip-away-when-no-one’s-looking streets, the best-place-to-break-down-and-drink-coffee shops. a tall wraith, too much boy and not enough depth to your smile, but i call you friend, and it’s enough. we stumble through the soft edges of town. we hide from the angry voices, familiar and unknown. we play pretend as if there’s nothing better to do, and for a city that never sleeps, never gives in to the heart attacks waiting with baited breath, never slows down, there really is nothing better to do.

but i know you, know your secrets, know how much you like to slip away when you think i’m not looking, know what booth you sit in at the coffee shop when you need to cry and not bother anyone. i should, I’m your friend, i hope that’s enough. grab my hand and we’ll walk through the soft edges of town again. we’ll hide from anger, we’ll hide from your dad and my mom, from expectations and all the things that wait with baited breath to sink their teeth into us. hold on tight to me and i’ll whisper until the heart attacks fade. we won’t sleep, we’ll just pretend that we can stay like this forever. there’s nothing i’d rather do.

[wokeuplateagain]

You keep cutting into me. You walk on me and I creak like old floorboards. You punch through me like making holes in the drywall. You call it love. You call it bad mornings and not-enough-sleep. I call it normal. I wonder why I can’t remember my childhood. I wonder why I don’t feel hope. I wonder when you stole that from me and when I started thinking of you as weak when your words are the strongest thing ever to course through my veins. So I say nothing. Because when you hurt I hurt. When you cry I feel my face grow wet. It isn’t fair. You break me down and if I return fire I only shoot myself. Murder-suicide. You’ll never know. Never know how you taught my voice to grow quieter the angrier I get. Never know about the flash backs. The brief moments of fear so strong that I shake. I tell you I’m cold. I think you’re cold. I think neither of us healed the way we thought we did, scars buried under smiles. I’m sorry. I’m sorry we’re like this. I’m sorry it won’t ever change. I’m sorry I’m just a broken house and you’ve never known home.

[wokeuplateagain]

forgetting feels good. the sound of photographs tearing, of trash bags filling with pieces of who i was, the sound of losing the memories everyone around me will keep.

i’ve forgotten my birthday. every happy day in the park with bubbles. out of the window falls the pages of those stories i never finished writing down. it feels so good to sink with them, fluttering slowly to my bedroom floor. i melt away like ice cream. i disappear.

a friend once asked me where i go, all those times that my eyes turn to glass. i smiled at her. i’ve always just asked how I’ll ever get back.

[wokeuplateagain]

i throw out my old journals, i’m playing russian roulette with my memories again. you press play on a song that used to be our favorite, i don’t know who sings it and I’ve lost the words. this is all meant to turn out okay. my voice is supposed to return to my throat, i should be able to see through the ghosts, i should be able to recall why i love you so much. instead i load the gun. i dump a photo album into the trash. i pull the trigger. click. bang. i’ve forgotten the person you grew to love in one shot.

[wokeuplateagain]

Trauma is an empty room.

My head is where I live.

My heart is filled with ghosts that float through walls and dissolve into shadows.

My head is an empty room.

My trauma lives there.

My heart is dissolving through my chest and I am a ghost.

My trauma is a ghost.

I am dissolving in an empty room.

My head is floating and my heart is drawn in shadows.

My empty room is flooded, I lie back and float, trauma is the water.

My heart is only full when your ghost lives there.

My head dissolves like a pill into the shadows.

My trauma dissolves like a pill in my heart.

My head is full of me and my ghosts.

The shadows are alive and they flood me, leaving my chest an empty room and rotting the floorboards.

I am a pill, dissolved on the tongues of strange ghosts.

My heart tells my head to make itself a shadow in an empty room

Trauma lives here, floated in on a flood of bad memories.