when you look at yourself in the mirror, do you feel real then?

when you walk around and everything is blurry but not and your body is miles away and hopelessly heavy, do you feel real then?

when you tear into the skin of your arm because you’re desperately searching for color, do you feel real then?

when you can’t focus your eyes, or you can but it doesn’t work right, do you feel real then?

do you look at yourself from years ago and think it’s not you?

i don’t think i ever had any discernible sense of self to begin with.

when you feel emotions, but they aren’t really yours, do you feel real then?

when your chest gets heavy, but the weight is never enough to keep you tethered to reality, do you feel real then?

when the still, flowing blood rushes and freezes in your ears, do you feel real then?

and when everyone tells you you’re okay because you look okay, and you smile, but you didn’t make your lips tilt and you’re screaming at yourself, begging yourself to reclaim your skin and your mouth and your hands, and your body moves when you tell it to but you didn’t feel it move,

do you feel real then?

i am not different like this.
take these colors snd scrape them down with a knife.
look at the lines you’ve made and how they overlap like oil pastels.

i am not different like an oil painting where the colors blend when you ask them too.
i am not different like watercolors where you can add water and change the saturation.

i am different like a picture drawn with crayola markers on printer paper.
drawn by a child in class while the teacher looks on with thinly veiled concern for the child’s mind.

he presses too hard sometimes and the ink blots and tears holes in the paper when young, uncoordinated hands try to keep it in place.

i am not different like clay molded masterfully, or even haphazardly.
i am different like holes torn in paper with too much ink to have any color besides a wild sort of black.