Inhibited - she told us so.

We developed an addiction,
A passion for repression.

High on the narrative to stay cohesive,
Naively slipping off our sleeves.

A decade later, I fluster -
To the sound of his home keys,
At his messages I freeze:

He puts a nose on his smileys,
He calls me things I don’t believe.

The vinyls play on in the shower,
I agitate with blue liqueur,
“Those jeans could’ve been bluer.”

Now time gets tighter and norms heavier,
We wish we'd grow younger.

He still calls me beauty,
Willingly joins my company.

But as tasteful as painted blue,
That room gave him the flu.

Fear teaches me, sort of aimlessly.

Blaming a resilience I wish I'd seen,
The punch I’d wish I’ve been -
a prey I wished I hit.

Overshadowing the dopamine I’d like to feel.

Via guilt-induced tears, effortfully shield-building.
Via timeless dampening -
I’m nervously standing, brainlessly erasing.

But never has anger crossed that brain,
Never have I ever played this game.

Engouffrée sous mes draps
Je ne rêve même pas.

Les faits sont ils; bien présents
Il en aura fallu du temps.

Et le coeur battant,
Je médite le néant.

C’est parce que, dès lors que je touche une note,
J’ai l’impression qu’elle sonne faux.

Parce que je me déteste au moment où je rate un panier,
Un saut d’obstacle,
Un verbe irrégulier.

Against my will, I’ve acquired this skill.
I’ve mastered the art of fault-picking,
I excel at depreciating.

Still, urgently seeking something diminishing,
Secretly yearning -
To combat flaws I’m dissecting.

For some sort of force to pull me?
Up to standards I don’t fulfil,
Down from aching self-worth, still.

And just like my dad,
I mask my sad.

Mutually we intellectualise our wounds,
Seemingly, we’re bound.

I’ve internalised invisibility,
Learned to distrust my own adequacy.

Sometime after shedding acquired skin,
I started to scream;
Craving to feel seen eventually gets boring.

Designing for someone else - I still felt;
Then I fell.

Into a shroud of contradiction,
I refused to flatten expectations -
All the while muting conformation.