& all this time,
it was i who was selling myself dreams.
imagining a future with someone
that was only in love with me

in my dreams.

& i find it so sad...
that they only take your sadness seriously
when you've survived an attempt or
when you're actually

... dead.

i once heard a story about a man who healed people for a living.
he'd make them laugh & mend their hollow, broken souls.
he'd assist them with their problems until they started to feel whole.
but in his mending of other people, he'd break inside every day,
as he used the substance his soul was comprised of
to glue the broken souls together.
until one day, he had none.
he had become so broken & empty that he felt he couldn't go on.
he went to a spiritual advisor & told him about his depression.
the spiritual advisor said, "there is a man named The Healer down the road that can make you laugh & heal your soul so that you may feel whole. go to him."
the man started crying & said, "but... i am The Healer."
he spent his whole life healing.
... but who heals the healer?
who nurses the nurse?
who listens to the one who's always listening?
we that take care of others must face a horrible reality  —

that no one can take care of us.

"but i care about you."
he said ...

       after i heard through the

g r a p e v i n e

       that he'd shared our energy with another.
he had ****** himself within her & she moaned his name
... probably.
& while he's sleeping peacefully, here i am,
rolling in bed, going insane.

"but we have a good thing together."
he said...

       after i saw a text come through his phone,
       it read

i m h o r n y b a b e, w h e n u c o m i n g t o s e e m e ?
    
       right then & there i wished i was blind
& i felt the tears run down my face.
i just didn't understand, how love,
something that's supposedly so beautiful...
could cause me so much pain.

"but i love you."
he said...

        as he tugged on my arm, his eyes screaming

p l e a s e d o n ' t g o

         but his actions being the antithesis of that.
& that's when i realized, i'd given him the power
to constantly break me.
break me &

B R E A K me, until i believed i was nothing.

"but i care about you."
"but we have a good thing together."
"but i love you."
i doubt i'll ever believe those lies again.

i'm a bit of a *******.
if you hurt me, somewhere in the back of my mind...


i'll be begging you to hurt me again.

out of her mother's fertility factory she was birthed
item number... i mean, person number one.
a barcode? she had none.
quickly thrown onto a conveyor belt
& then into a box.
in a box she was raised.
no sign of care from the others was conveyed,
despite the box she found herself so uncomfortably stuck in clearly marked
"FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE."
but still they shook the box &
didn't care about it's contents.
they'd throw the box from on stranger to another without concern.
they lit her insides on fire & still questioned why she'd burn.
they watched her whole self to up in flames
& still wondered when she'd return.
& got ****** when her shards cut through their skin,
despite them being the reason why she was so broken.
they kept asking why she was so "softly spoken."
an aptly named adjective after continuously tossing her around
like a soiled tissue on the playground in a little boys hand,
the girls screaming "eww, don't touch me!"
don't touch me. they didn't want to be touched by her,
don't touch me. she didn't want to be touched by them either.
don't. touch. me.
& so they tossed her to the side,
inside the delivery truck to deliver her to her destination
& to the shopkeeper's dismay, this item, i mean person was so broken
"nobody would want this." he said as he frowned
& removed her from the box,
he tossed her in the corner of his storage room, just like the others.
old, forgotten & useless,
with a new label, "DISCARD" written over "FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE."
& discarded she was.
for no one would ever want

a broken soul.