this won't just go away because you have conveniently removed yourself from it,
forgot how your tongue formed the words
the echoes are marching bands down a long, long street
and my ears keep ringing

you are lucky to sleep so soundly
while i toss and turn until i am pulled toward the beacon of day
i am a slave to time and pain against your simple animal rhythms
eat sleep drink drink eat sleep
and sometimes bleed

(but the way you bleed, and the way i bleed,
are very different things.)

maybe you're right
we don't have anything in common
i am a ball of yarn unraveling in your hands
and you like to play with the string

pretend to know me:
at my very core there is a door that leads to another
you will find nothing that you find sense in
a collective molecular abnormality
a genetic dysfunction
a soul made of equations that have not yet scratched the surface of geometry
i am not something to be solved in your laboratory mind,
under scrutiny i change my shape and very essence before you
i am not the box you put me in, nor am i the ribbons, the tape, the thin festive paper that rips easily
i am underneath that and underneath that
and the atmosphere surrounding it
but don't you dare tell me who i am
the years have not been kind and i have suffered, too,
and i deserve to keep the truth of my being to myself,
that deep well guarded
by creatures only found in mythologies
i find comfort in fiction, because i have been forsaken by reality
i do not hand myself over to others
and i will not hand it over to you.

i have a love affair with my scars,
a collector's cove
   of secret treasures

and late at night,
i stroke them like the memories
   of old lovers

note to self:
you do not live for yourself this time around,
your love will be taken for granted and
your body will be wrung out
like a used rag after
it is your use, do not question the place
you have been set so carefully
maybe in your next life you will
wear diamonds on your finger
not be born to prepare for the worst
you will be wrapped in silver blankets
your skin a warm shower, not
just something barely holding it all together

you might listen if i could write melodies and not treacheries
of spirit, violations of the psyche
stabs that pinch just right (just wrong)

you might just listen
if i was a songstress seductress
a siren in your bed in your head
(i could make you listen)

the boys will always win because they have fists
and if we cry too hard, too much
they can shove them in our mouths
spit in our hair
trample our dreams
destroy things without consequence
fear a great fuel, a great devil they welcome
and tango with
fists are stronger than feelings because there is no time for such
distasteful, factless,
imaginary concepts
such wastes of space, such wastes of time

i still admire the innocence in others
objectively,
like watching a movie already knowing the ending
but still suspending my disbelief for a few seconds of tenderness
where skin doesn’t feel like sandpaper
and nails against dry clay
(a feeling you never got used to.)

a relief to think that somebody must exist with purity, a somebody, truly
for somebody
else
before they have withered
before they have been neglected to be
placed in direct sunlight