This mundane heart, where my soul now lays
In the childhood bedroom where I used to play,
Hidden memories washed up by the past,
Trying to remember what I worked so hard to forget:
The illicit realization that my childhood has been auctioned off at lowest bid

I remembered how to handle your moods
When you didn’t remember my middle name

i am different now
from the fleeting words you didn’t mean
I muse at the fact that I changed my entire self for you because you dug into my brain and tugged at the parts I hate
you clawed your way through my nervous system and playfully stitched back the wires after you got the reaction
The way you grasped my body after shattering its purpose,
my mind frozen from bareness as I grabbed the blanket
You didn’t force yourself onto me,
But we both know you would never have to

    
      i am different now

this world couldn’t break me,
for it had hardened me long ago.

I tried to figure out your poems for so long
I was becoming one;
Line by line
I absorbed the ink,
Dissolved into the paper,
Tumbled into random commas.  
Only to emerge when it was complete

What was complete?
                                    
                           ­        “Exactly.”

The future is haunted,  
By what it can’t remember-
For the past is its only contender

the internal *****, from the words you say
to the way you don't ever seem to think my way
great minds think alike until we disagree
......
The crisis of yearning, for a body with an empty mind,
I have found myself loving a man who is not worth my time
......
I feel myself separating,
two at a time,
blooming while withering away.

It comes in waves,
        deeper than the ocean goes.
                           •••

Like double exposure film,
I flipped through these photos of my life
Mirrored images of the same person
Minutes apart
in three years time

Begging the tears to wash away the shame
the grappling of his touch has always seemed to bring
This picture book is full of unspeakable words
one I can never really to tell
Currently wrecking this connection I have desperately tried to build

Meanwhile when it’s dark and alone I lay
The features of his face play puppet shadow games
And ironically enough, while the darkness makes me weary, because that’s when he’s always with me
I just wish he had turned off the lights

It was easy for you to say I love you
Almost as easy as it was for you to leave
Maybe I should of tried harder
Or maybe played hard to get
I always played sad music just to cry a little
When the words you said hurt
Because you had numbed me to the point where pain somehow felt good
It’s always been easy for them to leave me
Walking away like they never needed me
I thought you understood
Maybe I’m the toxic one,
Or just the one that got away
All I know is maybe I need to be the one to leave
Instead of wishing they had stayed

there we were at 5am,
was that the sun or the stars in our heads?

I wrote every last word that had settled onto my mind,
listened to every podcast with the word “depression” in its title,
“These thoughts cannot haunt me”
I whispered dauntingly into my pillow.

through the pain I had self inflicted,
to the trauma I have always written
at the end of the day,
the only person left standing was in the mirror