I don't remember much
I remember sitting with my mom
She said something that triggered me emotionally
I ignored it, I zoned out
I excused myself
I came to my room
I closed the door
I lay in my bed
Enduring the pain
Of my emotional misfortune
As well as the physical pain
From my pounding head
For some reason
I caught sight of my chest
I could see my nightdress
And I could see my heart
Trying as much as it can
To shy away from the pain
I felt it sink into hiding
I wish there was something
Something I could do for it
It's always been there for me
All the grenades it's caught for me
The scars it's bared for me
The cracks it's cemented for me
I felt a tear fall from my right eye
I was stunned, I touched my tear
I tasted it, salty taste of melancholy
That was weird for me
Because I haven't cried in 12 months
I wasn't expecting to cry
I never thought I would cry
Then I felt it
That feeling you get
When you drown yourself
In your own river of tears

Crumbling cities.
Beauty in decay has always reminded me
of you.
When we were little and climbing trees
you told me of ow you would be great
one day,
like Athens and Rome.
I had laughed and called you silly.
Those were places and not people, I had said.
You shoved your tongue out and clamored:
"Watch me do it!"
I think I finally understand what you meant.
Singing songs to me in my backyard you
were amazing, thriving like you had sworn
to me
those many years before.
We danced and screamed from hilltops
with cities unfolding beneath
our mere human feet.
You weren't kind of the world, but you were
king of mine.
Later that night you dropped me off
at my front door.
Kissed my forehead and murmured
"Goodbye, I love you"
instead of wishing me goodnight.
You fell in the time between night and dawn
and when I woke up the next morning
our empire was gone.

What they don't tell you-they, the general public, society, doctors, your best friends-
Is that a hospital is more than four white walls
It exists beyond the doctors in starched coats hanging to their knees
Beyond the mutterings of schizophrenic people as they walk by
Beyond the daily pills given and tongues pulled up directly after
Beyond the strip searches, the vitals taken, the evening bed-checks
A hospital lives in stigma
Stigma where you are the outcast, the
Mental patient, the
Crazy one.
A hospital lives in your mind,
In the tormented nightmares you wake up from
Shaking and drenched in sweat
Sheets twisted between white fists
A hospital lives in your gait
The way you swish your hips away from people sometimes
Because you don't want them to know your darkest secret,
Know where your barriers form, where they wall the world around you.
A hospital lives in the faint scars attached to your wrists,
Your stomach
Your thighs
Your calves
Your heart
A hospital becomes a sort of monster in this way
It rots in your memory
Tells you about that one time when things almost ended
Tells other people that you are off, but not in a way anyone can see
Unless they look hard enough
A hospital
Is supposed to heal wounds, Not
Create them.

I’d like to say that I have moved on
and maybe I have
but forgetting you looks a lot like
the time you sent me home before running to catch the last bus;
I just kept looking back at you,
and right now,
I still am.

You know the feeling you get when you're holding your breath and you need to breathe, but you're still not at your destination where you can take a breath? You get that burning sensation in your lungs when you seem to be gasping with your mouth closed, even though I don't think that's possible.

Is there a word for that?