Please do not ask me
about why I cannot give,
or in what ways I feel unable
to start over.

I've told you before,
I've told you so many countless times,
that I cannot feel anymore,
and when I do,
it rests in a porous place in my head,
not my soul,
and I refuse
to pretend I could love another
fully,
so please,
do not ask me again.

I've told you before,
I cannot bring my heart to a pulse,
much less trust
anyone, not even myself,
with that responsibility.

I know better than to pretend
I am capable of romance,
and no sorts of pressures
will allow me to breathe easy at night;
I already have so much trouble
letting things go.

I've been limping because of them,
but I've seen others paralyzed,
tortured,
or burned alive by them,
and I'm so scared
that next time,
I'll be torn apart,
and then no one will be left
to protect the next victim.

I despise how abuse is always
littering my airspace,
always tainting
the water I drink,
and always rupturing what's left of me.

I had this preconceived notion,
unfortunately,
that once you've been abused,
you'd be wise enough to escape
another abuser,
but boy, how he showed me,
how they all showed me,
how stupid I am
to have believed that.

I want to imagine,
though how useless it would be to do so,
what it would have been like
to love someone
and to be loved by someone
genuine, for once.

I must confess,
I don't think I would know
how to accept a love
that isn't corrupted,
or perhaps,
nonexistent,
and that pains me more
than my delusion that
I could stop them from hurting me.

Lost in transit,
I thought I saw a ghost,
with whispy hair,
and a broken nose;
it looked damaged.

I wouldn't have guessed
that I knew who she was,
no, I wouldn't have known,
had it not been for her
single laugh
that let me know,
I was her,
and she was me,
and that she had detached
many years ago,
wandering the world
without us together,
or that she was so far
into her lightweight, empty form
that speaking words
would be untranslatable
and we could not communicate
to each other anymore.

I could look at you,
but never recognize your face
as it has become much too distorted
with malicious intentions
and sweaty, sleepless nights;
you are quite far gone,
and as I look at your indistinguishable face,
I'm not sure I'd ever remember
who you once were.

I never asked
for my hands to be caked in ash,
fists full of powdered, smothered memories
weigh me down like cages;
if you were to see my body,
cut apart, missing, coated
and preserved as a martyr,
like a body in Pompeii
trying to fight back the smoke.

Emptiness
echoes but does not return
the same lifeless message.
Only the stillness of the room reflects
such dreary gasps for color
and that still desire of the moth
longing to surpass its dull greys
for the wings of a fluttering butterfly
in its glory days.