You made a comment,
You let your drunken tongue slip,
And out came words
like a drunken man’s fist.
To my gut they went first,
To the place in my body
That holds all the pain.
To a place I conditioned
my “mindless”, “privileged” mind
to hate.
I digest them easily,
Familiar still the taste
of words about excess,
the body and the mind
do not forget.
I’m used to too much.
These words are internalized,
they become a part of my system-
I feel the universe shifting within.
These words are a black hole,
an off switch,
a portal to my darkness-
a place from which I am afraid
to speak,
a place where
my mind is not crystalline,
but jagged and shattered.
I speak with intentions
to cut you open,
forgetting the words
will rip my throat on the way up.
And I can feel tears
down the back of my throat,
Salting the wounds
we’ve just invoked.
I don’t want to taste this,
I promised to myself
Too many times
I wouldn’t swallow anything
that wasn’t intended to help me heal.

written sometime around 11/18/2016