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Alaska Feb 11
I remember sitting in the garden of my therapists office, trying to feel the sun on my skin.
She asks me if I can feel the warmth and no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to find it.

It took me 14 years to say those few words that changed everything.
When my lips formed the whispered sentences, my shaking body suddenly felt so very different, even though the same things I was talking about happened to the same body.

When you start telling the truth, even if you can't build up the courage to speak all of it, a few words are enough, it becomes reality.
It's been real all this time, but now that it's entered someone elses mind, you can't take it back.

And maybe that's what it takes. To start your healing.

Speak your truth, even if your voice is shaking.
If there’s one thing for sure abt myself. ,
I’m going to survive  ,
I will figure it out
jǫrð Nov 2023
I found the transcript,
All my transgressions
Sat heavy in the bottom
Of the ottoman you left out
On the porch when the hurricane came.

And next to that, a toy
Spot, as he was once called,
Risen once more to claim
The key of my death,
Of all that was once white and innocent.

I can read between the lines,
I've become an expert at that
And I know what she meant
When she placed these together
Like a time capsule of my fall from grace

She never wanted me anyway.
The History: My only crime, was that I thought I loved someone much older than myself. My brother came home from the military, and created unnecessary conflict. He coached my mother to have the man I was seemingly in love with arrested and I blamed myself for his lost years.  I always knew her actions were correct though my feelings were unwavering. That's what young love does. She always told me I, "Chose a man over my own family" all the while leaving me without proper medical treatment, or food or care to go out with men she was seeing. She was a bar fly that never married.
After abandoning me for a short while as a child to party here in Florida, she took me back and we moved here permanently. She took me from my father to spite him. She wanted me to take care of her when she was dying. Made me promise I would my whole life. I loved her through all of the abuse.
I wasn't there when she passed though. I never expected her to go so suddenly. And when I went to her home, I found the courtroom transcript of my greatest trauma placed with my very first toy from childhood. The one she placed in my crib at birth. One last dig from beyond the grave.
Jeremy Betts Jan 2021
I'm an enigma, a quitter and survivor, a pioneer weary of the change that literally defines the career
In desperate need of a savior or at the very least a lucky rabbits foot souvenir
One to keep me free and clear from the type of bad karma that's over the top severe
I've been thinking I don't belong here, I don't know if it's me talking that talk or the fear
I let it take the wheel and steer, my driving advise from the rear seat falls on a deaf ear
I guess I ain't suppose to interfere with the charioteer, the why isn't clear
Now I've gotta kick it into another gear to commandeer my own life like a buccaneer
This deer in headlights nonsense won't get me anywhere near my "new beginnings" frontier
I lost track of my trail guide mountaineer, forgotten about like I'm the fourth musketeer
The sheer volume of every collected tear almost drowns me at least once a year
Or acts like pavement when I smear across it after falling from the atmosphere
My guardian angel is a horrible puppeteer, seems to disappear when needed most like he's the one with crippling fear
...go figure

©2021
Jeremy Betts Feb 2018
It's a miracle that when I hit the proverbial wall I didn't split my skull right up the middle and spill it all
Not able to gain full control, a factual portrayal of self betrayal as usual
Once beautiful, evidence of it not admissible, miserable and hypocritical
A little dysfunctional don't ya know
All the scars that don't show are what slow the normal flow
Out of my mind cause its inhabitable, so I turn to a radical but experimental cure that'll baffle the medical field because its all hypothetical
What if I didn't hear my call to greatness or maybe I just dropped the ball
I could make a voodoo doll and place him at the finish line so I could win after all

Instead...

My fall hit terminal velocity before I stained the city streets and still survived impossibly
Low visibility so there's no way to see what's right here in front of me
All the money in the world couldn't put humpty dumpty or me together again indefinitely
They just don't have the technology to put me back the way I otta be
There's a high probability that I live in a realm of impossibly
To actually believe that I could ever be a normal man in this society is lunacy
But do I even want to be a part of this idiocracy? I mean really
But it's easy to get lost at sea, holding on so desperately to a buoy as the waves that represent the calamity of life pummel me savagely
No key to the shackles that bind me
I'll be lucky if luck ever finds me
Try not to give a **** but life always reminds me
So I gouge out my eyes to permanently not see

Now...

It's only darkness as I regress to a familiar residence
A yellow envelope taped to the door, no more light access, only dark witnessed at this address
Under constant duress from the excess stress and an abundance of B.S.
The absences of a conscience is the best plan to make it easier but I must confess
That this chess game is at a stale mate, zero progress
I don't even know what progress feels like, seems like I only digress
But I still obsess over a success that will never be reached due to being far to careless
Nevertheless, I continue the process even though I don't possess any finesse
Like a bull in a China shop, I make a mess of everything with nothing but my presence
So in essence you could make a case that my existence here, by every measure, pointless
And you might be right, at the very least it's a good guess

©2018
B Jun 2021
Hello again-
Cover my bones with your cardigan
how long have you been a necro baby?
Cause' I've been dead since 2010.

Am I still cold?
when you wrap that woolen yellow round my back
Is my body old?
as you stroke blackberry lips with the breath that I lack.

Do you like the way
my eyes
- still alive -
never shut?
Someone can finally stand to look on you,
man of sin, skin, bore; a mutt.

Can you feel the dryness beneath my throat?
Watch the insects flee my face
and see the rot of teeth in the midst of groan.

Hello again.
Bramble crowned amongst worst of men.
How long have you been a necro, honey?
Cause' I'm dead as poet's pen.
Riley Larkin Apr 2023
Tonight I will
Enjoy my bed
While you lay in yours
I wonder if you regret it all
After the first night when guards closed the doors
When you were on the inside
With absolutely nothing you could do
I still can’t believe the time has come
Punishment for the destruction that comes with you
I never thought it’d be real
You understanding what it feels like
To be a powerless prisoner
Giving everything you got- to still lose the fight

Do you lose sleep over me
Putting you where you belong
Do the voices in your head still tell you I’m in the wrong?

I wonder how many months
It will take to break your spirit

All you have is your thoughts
How many memories till you hear it

The muffled screams, my terrified eyes
Or are your memories filled with stories saying I’m the bad guy

Blaming your true colors on account of being high
While you looked down at me on the floor, beating me just enough not to die

Are you angry with me because I got away?

If you could see me tomorrow do you know what you would say?
I think you would walk right past me
Without even a look
Making me feel like I was nothing
It’s the biggest play from your book

I think about this often
If I had the chance, what would I say
I forgive you for making the biggest mistake of your life
Knowing I’m the one that got away
anita Feb 2023
sometimes my hardest nights are my best ones.
the nights where i am lonely, but not alone
the nights where i stare up at the sky
and see all those stars
and i realize that the world is so infinite
the nights that remind me that we are all just trying our best
and we all feel like strangers in our own bodies sometimes
and that despite how much we try to convince ourselves otherwise,
things
will
be
okay
i can't get out of my head
You
still live,
after dying too much
In a poem.
I'm back!
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