I think trauma is a strange word.
I was probably twelve or thirteen when I first heard it - oh yeah, it's when you get really hurt, right?

Blood and guts everywhere.

Thank goodness that doctors exist.
They can patch you up and make you whole again.

"Incoming trauma! All hands on deck!"

I think it's a strange word because, supposedly, trauma is what happened to me. But that can't be right, can it?

I imagine myself being rolled into a hospital on a stretcher, doctors and nurses taking me from paramedics.

"Eighteen year old female suffering from internal cardiovascular and neuro injuries. Speech and sight is impaired."

I'm okay. What are you talking about? All I did was love two people.

"Injuries are consistent with loving parents that don't love you in return."

Wait, what? No, my parents love me!

My dad likes to drink sometimes but at least he doesn't act unpredictable anymore when I suggest he go to bed.

Well, there was that one time he fell down the stairs. Also the time he peed on me while I was sleeping because he believed my room was the bathroom.

But my mom is okay! She likes to leave a lot and there were those times she had loud *** with strangers in the room next to mine late at night. But she's good, I swear. Even when she had chlamydia and I held her while she cried.

Even when she left and never came back.

"I need a crash cart in here! Patient is bleeding out and her blood pressure is dropping - "

I'm fine, I swear.
All I did was love them.

Wait, hang on!
What about that time my parents argued and my dad tried to choke my mom to death?
I mean...I did run away from the house, crying, to find our neighbor.
I did beg her to call the police.

But that's not trauma, right?
I just wanted them to stop yelling. I just wanted him to let her go before she stopped breathing.

That's love.

"Paddles, please! Charge to three hundred..."
"Clear!"

These doctors really don't know anything.

I break it
wholly, this time, the shame a red reef of guilt
traipsing across burning skin.

I keep getting
angry with you, unreasonable, unfounded,
unlovable moments that you always see.

Why were they
all blonde, whilst my long hair coils dark
a sin choking at my neck.

One a lawyer,
two a doctor and three a nothing that sits
at home and eats at your words.

I keep trying
to make myself believe that you do not
love me, when you say you do.

You do, love
me. Speak blasphemous prayer (I am enough)
though, I never have been before.

Dreams can come late
yet still they come
a life to catch up with
to realise, to complete.

Do you dream for yourself only?
Surely not.

Daydreams are underestimated
God dreams within you
with you
for you.

Sometimes you find that it is gone,
and you look
and you think
and you feel
that it is gone.

And, gone from it, you can
breathe again— as if soft hands
pressed tightly to a neck
were relieved— the breath
comes freely and often
but irritated skin rubs
red, inflamed memories
playing out

like diamonds on some
bruised necklace:
hurts less, less, less,
never fades.

Answering to animist impulses
He was certainly alert and receptive
With his mathematics of love
An urbane tribute song to transience
That echoes the color of nothing
Just a metaphor for memory

Near-sighted and tone-deaf
His steady gaze before him
He says in his language that he’s lost
Going on and on about desiring things
Until the whiff of strangers breaks his spell
And just like that it’s over

We're all so captivated by the moment
Letting it slip by as eyes lit up by phones.
We've created sadness and happiness
In rectangles that connects those alone,
Except it's just a different kind of loneliness;
Hit escape, backspace, redefine the definition
Of what it meant to be alone.

We're all connected, we've forgotten
Whether to check or uncheck the connection,
We've lived as circles on a square nothing
More than bits of bytes for an avatar;
Where we witness *** before driving a car,
And we're caught in some lie the world built
That we are so enchanted by thoughts of
"The single ladies are in your area"
So we build blindfolds on what truth the lie beholds
We're all just bits and bytes of data.

So how much more of mankind are we
Where our eyes are glued to a screen
And chatrooms are as far as we've ever been.

We're all striving to be  in the latest social circles
That we redefined circle to mean a locked box.
So hit escape, backspace and in either way
we'll always find ourselves unchanged.

In a world of wires and threads
Of bits and bytes of data
How alone have we become?
Where information superhighways
Are all full of passing cars.
Tragic that traffic keeps moving
And we'd forever remain friends
But yet strangers all in the like.