the snakes have always infiltrated my life,
whether slowly or in masses
they've been consistent.
depriving oxygen to certain limbs
so I could not walk or crawl to safety.
some days they get just close enough
to swallowing me whole
that I can still smell
the metallic on their tongues.
I've tried to fight but too small
tried to scream but too quiet
tried to do something
but felt too nothing.

and sometimes
you become the thing you have feared-
I am starting to taste the metallic in my own mouth now
staring to think of ways I can feed off their oxygen
starting to deconstruct everything I've known about forgiveness
it doesn't serve me in this instance.
What good is being quiet and agreeable?
I still get eaten alive every time.

It's always just enough to fill them up
but not enough to leave me for dead
they still need me far too much
an ego bigger than their stomach.

They should've predicted
I'd be carrying all these resentments-
built up like muscle along my spine
metal encasing my knuckles
but how could they?
survival they only know because of me
they don't know what it's like to be bled dry
by someone who's skin you share.

how could they?
that would require paying attention.
and I have done enough of that
to build lifetimes with just the surface.
They could not even recall
the color my limb turns when they feed off it.

they will learn not to bite the body that has carried them,
as I shed the skin we share.

I have come face to face with it again-
aligning my eyelids with stench and ruin
I am collapsing on memory
that should be dust by now.
It is still anvil
and calcite
creating callouses
at the base of my neck.

Memory is a shotty thing at best
it doesn't know who I am now
only bringing back the moment
of k9 teeth and flesh wounds
rippling through my skin
like a scraped knee on pavement.

I am not young anymore
but she still lives inside of  me
wound ****** and filled with asphalt
coughing on tears and snot
as it falls down my face.
They never saw her
how the world was so bright
and loud and heavy all the time.
How a passerby could have a ***** look
and make her cry and cry.
They'd always ask me what was wrong
and how do I answer
"it's everything"
when at that age I knew nothing
but the lump in my throat
and the anvil on my little body?

This heaviness has never lifted
I have simply moved around it
learned to dance on top of it
gained muscle memory-
these limbs strong and stature
in the face of the weight it carries
because if I keep moving
maybe I will no longer realize
just how heavy it is
and just how strong I have to be to carry it.
Maybe my arms will tell me stories
of how muscle was ripped and rebuilt
over and over and over again
just so I could function
and laugh
and be alive.

I carry it all with me
like it is a handprint in wet cement.
A small penny for good luck
with my name etched above.
You can still find me there
buried under the cracks
under the tire marks
and trips to the mailbox.
You can still find what remains
of that version of me.
Little, wishing for someone's something-
wishing for anything from anyone at all.

She still lives inside of me
and aches for the day she can take a breath
without having to inhale around the anvil.

and someday, she will.

I used to think I felt things
but thinking about why I feel things
isn't the same as feeling them.

I used to think I knew
the ebbs and flows of my mental state
but turns out I was separating myself from my body.

This body is an island on it's own.
Disconnecting itself from my spinal column.
I have learned the art of detachment.
Going away whenever I don't want to feel a thing
and when I do, feel it all, it consumes me.

How can I live with this childlike sadness
sifting inside of me, just waiting for a
crack in my smile to seep through?
How can I live with this emptiness I carry
until I realize it was never emptiness at all-
instead it was just hidden away
in a deep pocket of my brain
waiting until the moments I discovered it.
Like a hidden treasure chest
I didn't realize I had been looking for
over the course of 29 years.

I am so close to 30 and so
far away from any semblance of adulthood
this body she is still 9 years old
begging for the attention she sought
but never got.
Screaming into pillows at night
wishing someone would really see her-
but they never even heard her muffled screams.

Between the low blows
and the secrets below-
they never knew I needed to be seen
they never knew what they didn't see.

a body full of secrets seeping at the seems
until I come undone over and over again.

emaciated by the thought of what has been done to this body
continuously checking my breath
the way it rises and falls
hypervigilant of my pulse
the way it races up and down my neck.

used to spend days inside my head
outside of this body I was trapped inside.
but now I am coming to terms
with coming home to this place
I have abandoned for so long.

feeling for the first time in my whole life
and so now I experience everything, fully.
trying to compartmentalize catastrophizing
and hypochondriasis
but they always find a way through.

these emotions are still just children
temper tantrums and attention seeking
I honor them as they speak a language
I never felt safe enough to explore.
Sensitivity ripples through me
just a blank stare on the bedroom floor
wondering how I am immobilized
by an unanswered text
by my upstairs neighbors
by a knock at the door.

she lives inside me
the little girl needing comfort and safety
and I will hold her hand every step of the way
watching as this repression
lifts
slowly.

I see the earth burning around me
in the most literal sense.
Bombs of foreign wars
we are complacent inside
heating the earth.

There is ice in Texas
there are children
and mothers
and doctors
and lawyers
and people
turned to rubble and ash,
we are complicit in their pain.

We have only two different
monopolies to choose from
and I am wondering
how to crawl out of my skin
or maybe move to Iceland.

How do you swallow this type of pain?
the kind where you are too far away?
The kind that twists your insides
and provokes a unique kind of helplessness.

I used to let my wrists run red
just to come back to my body
and now here I sit
wanting to save the world.
wanting to take away pain
I so easily caused myself.

how does helpless feel this heavy?
like the weight of the world is
resting on my psyche alone.

the united states of disarray
dysregulation and disempowerment.

this never really felt like home
but now more than ever
I am stuck settled in a reality
someone else put me in.

my nervous system is teetering
between defeat and reaction
between the joker and batman
between benzos and stimulants.
trying to course correct
a dejected conglomerate.

this can't all be for nothing,
so instead of giving up I keep fighting
for those who don't have the agency
for those who don't have autonomy.

rummaging through coping tactics
like they're a closet full of clothes,
writing is the closest thing to closure I'll ever know.

I used to know how to write about my body,
how to take this amalgamation of memory
and harness it into something beautiful
but somewhere along the lines I lost myself.

lately I have been hiccupping at the edge of a knife
nerves running rampant beneath my skin
nothing to say to this pain threating violence to this body.

I try to look grief in the eyes these days
but inside I am still that small fragile girl
wishing ripped hair follicles were the only thing
falling apart on this body.

But I have made a mess of not feeling
not writing, just running away from
the knife that begs to cut me open.

I have kept it so close to my chest
never wanting to see how this trauma
could exit so tragically
due to a single memory.

but here I sit, hand full of hair
blade to my forehead
wishing this childhood was
just a nightmare I could wake up from.

and the knife isn't real
but the memories still are
so still I sit
hands empty, chest aching
at all they have done to me.

take and take and take
this body that still after 29 years
doesn't feel like it belongs to me.

So I return
knife to paper
pen to paper
fingers to keys
wishing I could make something
beautiful
out of
my own
remembering.

You spend
most of your nights
missing her.

You steady your walk-
forcing yourself
towards a double bed
you no longer find comfort in.

The floor wraps it's
fibers around your feet
and you cling to the carpet.

It smells new like-
this isn't a house you've
spent most of your life
buried in.

Move away.

Remind yourself
what freedom feels like.
Be up early to admire
the dew again.

Let it seep
through your bones.

Soak inside of it
like moisture is your head's
only ticket to closure.

You think of her again.

Break the blades of grass
between your fingers
and convince yourself
you and precipitation
have something in common-

these tears they contribute
to your growth.  

Wake up.

Pay attention to
the fact you lived.
Don't be mad she didn't