I've had it for so long,
this sadness,
that it almost feels like
a second skin.
Some days it speaks like me,
it acts like me,
it becomes me,
it is me.

But, I am not my sadness,
although it dwells on,
unyielding.
I am not what happened to me.
I am not my hurt.

I am still becoming.

At my worst, you taught me
how to feel again,
brought me places I thought
had already ceased to exist,
now I miss them.
I miss them all the time.

Without my compass, my guide
all I have are these thoughts.
Eyes aimlessly searching for trails
in undergrown forests,
hopelessly lost.

You could have left me
the way you found me:

a screen door that only knows how to open,
a playground swing causing accidents,
a walking precaution,
a sink hole trying to grow a heart,
something inherently broken,
something with missing parts.

But, you didn't.

You mended the hinges,
you took down the warning signs,
grew an entire meadow of wildflowers—
you patched me up with your love.

My cup is brimming,
and I no longer know
where else to pour.

Absence is a strange occurrence,
a shapeshifter manifesting
in the most trivial things.
A presence where there is none.
Something never entirely gone.

You were wrong about me.
I am no halcyon,
no summer song,
but a wilted rose you picked
with its sharp thorns.

I wasn't a catch.
I am a fire hydrant's glass.
Something constantly left shattered
when it all goes up in smoke.

There were warning signs to beware,
great walls you had to climb,
more parcels inside,
sealed with labeled reminders
to handle with care.
That a wrong cut of a wire
could trigger explosives,
that the place wasn't just fragile,
it was also volatile.

There's a reason why
from miles away you'd been told
to keep your own distance.
Why this wasn't just something
you could happen to stumble upon,
but a shipwreck, a paper town,
a lost city you needed to find.

When it dawned upon you
that this was not paradise,
but a haunted cemetery of some kind,
you snuck your way back
to the hole you fell into;
burning the place to the ground,
like the ones who came before you.

To think that the planets might have been misguided
when they let your star sign almost be my rise;
they would never have guessed
how in twenty years my sockets would confine
sullen, sunken eyes
surrounded by darker spaces,
recurring insomnia I try to hide.
Worn-out clothes now, twice my size.
You gave me the longest summer of my life.

I hate my voice booming static
on the other end of the line.
I miss all my old friends,
and I can't figure out why
I wait in my tower for a knight,
but when at long last he comes
I'd throw him out the window
expecting him to survive.

Store me in a foreign wooden house,
but please
let me out.
Daylight seething through skin
and bones I don't have.
Rain wiping hand-painted
stage pearl-white smiles.

Make me walk
and then run on my own
without strings holding up
my wrists and calves.
I hope by then a mile
knocks the wind out of my lungs
and while I pause for breath,
lay rest, look up
may it remind
me of the crown I wear,
the color of the sky.

Tear up scripts
made for me to recite,
and let me write
all the stories
I'd rather hear,
not just act out
with my time.

I'm not cut out for a role
I never auditioned for
or this life.