they told me that i am deficient of attention,
but how can that be when i have memorized
every freckle dotted on your cheekbones and
every white-tipped scar mapped across your skin?
maybe it's because my mind can't make room for
anything else, because you are all i see when i close
my eyes and the first thing i see when i open them

they told me that my depression is in remission,
like a cancer that has spread throughout my body
only to go dormant, to lay quiet just beneath the
surface, waiting to try to drag us down yet again.
they told me that this was good news, i can be happy,
but all i could hear was the sound of the tide
always waiting for its turn to take me out to sea

they told me that i sit on the borderline of two states
of existence, subject to the shift between love and hate
and passion and wrath and infatuation and heartbreak,
always trying to ask you which person i should be.
like the flower i used to pluck the petals from
in my youth, constantly whispering to myself,
"i love you, i love you not, i love you, i love you not."

they told me that this means that i can get better now,
that putting names to the faces of the skeletons in my
closet will allow me to bury them in their rightful place,
that i can finally learn to ease my grip and let things go.
but it has taken almost two decades to find my way here,
to finally answer the question of what is wrong with me,
and the journey to get here was long, and i am tired.