6/29

When you left,
I went looking for a high.
It was easy to find,
The temporary kind.

When I told him that you died,
The one who always held the knife,
His hand touched my shoulder,
Warmth trickled down my spine
But it wasn’t blood

It was sunlight.

Gold filled my eyes
I left the world behind.

For a day.

So I chased
And I told them all
You can’t ignore the girl who lost what you can’t live without. 

A 13-year-old brain,
Filling in the blanks,
To be a victim is to be safe.

I’ve played my role masterfully,
Weaponized fragility,
Downplayed my abilities,
Found power in pity.

Now grief is a gun
And comfort is a robbery.

Left all alone
Nowhere to go
Too young to know
I let others build my backbone.

Now my back is a patchwork of my past,
Spare parts and jagged cracks,
And I’m running out of tape to keep my borrowed bones intact. 

So I battle the temptation,
To play the damsel in distress.
I lead with hesitation
I rethink punctuation
Retreat when I feel warm
Keep score of who gives more

I’ve made sympathy a threat.

So I suffer in silence as a way to protect
Pressure builds inside my back,
And suddenly I need more tape,
When my goal was not to ask. 

15 years gone by,
But I’m still frozen in time,
I’m still the little girl with the ever-breaking spine.

I try not to be unkind, 
But I’ve resented the patterns that she made mine.
Forcing my resilience.
Losing sleep to hyper vigilance.
Outsourcing the light that keeps me alive.

But patterns lose their potency
When you notice the light at their periphery
And hold onto it tight.

I’m still working on trusting my own eyes.

But I dream of the day
I’ll find my own eternal flame
Purging my body of doubt
That I’ll ever stop chasing being found

Because it’s easier to weather darkness,
When you know your light will never go out.