Fear dances in the halls of my memories
Fear resides in most of my present
It does not care where I am
It threatens me

I see fears shadow in things I used to love doing
I see fear in the eyes of those I love
Fear dances with others
Fear is not faithful to only one

Fear is reliable
However fear is also the last to leave
But the first to arrive
Fear is a four letter word

Or an enemy

I have never cared more deeply for something so temporary
I trimmed the dead leaves and put them in water to preserve them for as long as I could
Make them stay alive
as alive as I felt when you gave them to me

I keep them in sunlight
something so beautiful deserves to see more than my desk
and the papers that flood it
The ornaments of my life that surround the vase in which my flowers reside

The ornaments that sometimes remind me of when I didn't feel as alive
The poems I had forgotten to finish
for emotions can be just as temporary as flowers
but we try and keep them alive

So we cut the dead leaves
we stick them in a vase
feed them sunlight
and care so deeply, even if it's as temporary as flowers

I feel like nothing when you touch me
Parts of me flaking away
Being carried away in the winds that you control
carrying them places I am not allowed to find

I feel heartbroken
Every time you take a piece
Not even examining it before crushing it on the floor
Making me feel crazy for wanting attention or to be read

Picking apart my every thought
Making me feel it should be my last
making me feel nauseous at the sound of my own voice
Making me want to throw up everything I ever said to you

I am wrong
Always wrong
I am nothing
Always nothing.

to you.

Happy, or so it seemed
Happiness with you seems like inadequacy
Happiness may feel like a bad stomach ache
Or saying goodbye over and over again

Maybe happiness is biting your tonuge
Telling everyone you love “no”
Watching yourself slip away
Pushing yourself off the highest peak

Maybe happiness was finding myself at rock bottom
Watchng you bury me even farther into the ground
Watching you laugh as you put the dirt over my face
Making sure I was really dead

Happiness was actually getting up
Brushing the dirt off
Looking myself in the face
Finding myself alive again

I find myself relating to the trees
Especially now that it’s fall
Slowly leaves are falling around me
Creating a heap on the floor, disassociated like someone I used to know

If a leaf falls does the tree feel no pain?
Rooted in the same place it has no choice but to watch it fall
Why does it take so long for spring to come
Why does it take longer for these new leaves to grow?

Checking the pulse on our love in a room that felt so dead was the hardest part
The worst was hearing the faint thump,
only coming from one side, mine.

Realizing that being half alive, was worse than being dead.
I killed it, you killed it, we both did away with what was left.
We waited for the silence, the final breath, but when it came time
I was the only one to witness it.

Why is it that once we age we find ourselves defined by our bodies? Something that we have simply become a bystander in has become all of our identity.

Why is it that what grows around my soul is all anyone sees?

Why is it that I am judged for every mark or hair that I didn’t put on my body
But I refuse to remove

Why is it that I am taken by the arm and told how to act
How to be someone that does not sleep alone

Why am I so out of control for thinking of my body as a temple and not a place of warfare, not a conquest to be had
Why am I the crazy one in a room full of addicts?
Addicted to the place they’re in when they skip a meal, or get rid of the one they just had to indulge in
Addicted to society telling them that for every bone they can see, that they did well
They wear their bones like gold stars
Making sure they are vulnerable enough to be wanted
Making sure they are wanted, period

Constantly wishing to be less
Hoping to have lost more, every morning while looking in the mirror
Taking time, lunch breaks, to get rid of more
To purge what is rightfully theirs

Until it’s finally gone