This time of night
Is an old trap
Familiar
And dog-eared
And well-worn
And haunted

Nothing good happens after two
—it's a funny little adage—
And I'm a funny little insomniac
Begrudgingly listening to my racing
Heart
In the silence
The restlessness gathering
Storms beneath my skin
Lightning sparking wildly across my mind

This is the hour of madness
This
This is when
E v e r y t h i n g
Unravels
And all I can do
Is hope my muscles stay stuck to my bones
Hope my veins stay caged in my skin
Hope my lungs stay expanding against the weight
Of the darkness

They always say
It's like boiling a frog

It was more like
Damnation
Eternal and unflinching
An ouroboros
Whose fangs always held
Venom

Inside an unhinged jaw
It's easy to be
Blind
To lose your bearings
And mistake a predator's steaming breath
For the heat of the sun

In scarcity
It's easy to think
Scraps
Are the best you'll ever get
But even Hades grew sick of darkness
And ventured into the wildflowers

At two am
You'll dissect the snake for answers
You'll wonder
What would you have done differently
If your senses hadn't been so
Warped

You should never forget the sharp lash of his temper
The way he wraps himself with words to
Tower
Over you
The calculated battering at the edges of your mind
"You are fragile. You are pathetic. You are broken."

Whether you have the strength to wait out the siege
Or whether you strike back
Or whether you finally crumble
You will catch scorn for it all
The only thing the world wants to see
Is an obedient woman
Silently taking blows

You should never forget
That they only want the bruises blooming across your flesh
And the smile that says that all is well

What you wanted was war
Thundering and merciless
Wanted Armageddon to roll in
So you could follow every avenging angel
Brash with bloodlust
And feel righteous in the end

I felt the shift in the atmosphere
Heard the horsemen, saw the lightning
But I had long ago grown weary
Of desperate, clashing swords

You built trebuchets
So I built walls
Studying the stillness of stones
Observing the physics of load bearing and
Force balancing and
Standing unshaken as the sky itself shatters

The onslaught was calculated
Unyielding and arrogant
But of all the accusations lobbed over the ramparts
The only ones that drew blood
Were those fashioned after my own devices
Those festering things that grew out of my nightmares
Seeded with the secrets I'd once let fall in peacetime

You've called out endlessly for my head
But I won't bleed out for you here
I've been studying the patience of water
The salty tracks quietly working their way
Through all the hard places
Out to the sea

I won't bleed out for you here
I faced the red maw that would unmake me
I spun my own stitches out of ether
And lived

The city had been as frenetic as my circling thoughts
Everyone shoving by in a hurry
While my heart careened around
Untethered and chaotic and
Terrified
Fumbling for the right beat while you fumbled your keys

A wildfire of opportunity among the grim apartments
We flared to life
Surprised and laughing and
Breathlessly tangled
And for a wild moment
I felt I could stay suspended there in the dizzying heat

We both know I ran instead
Felt the unfamiliar flames licking up my back
And panicked

In my most chilling nightmares
I retrace my steps
Scream soundlessly to rewrite the story
To linger on the sidewalk with you
To stay, just a little longer
Only to watch our phantom selves
Shatter the fragile magic that could have been

In my wildest dreams
I’m still gasping against your chest
My name is still raggedly on your lips
Like a spell
Like a prayer
Like a promise

Perhaps we thought we could move in with Schrödinger's cat
And be everything
And nothing
At once
(as long as no one asked)
We could be simultaneously aflame
And just waiting for a match to strike
As long as no one opened the ****
Box

In retrospect
It's a lot to ask
For people not to go prying open lids

There are brief, shining moments
When I exist only for
Myself
When my words aren’t rearranged for anyone’s comfort
And my face isn’t composed for anyone’s enjoyment
And my body is just
My own

I have never belonged to myself

I grew up passed from
Judgment to judgment
Eyes raking me at every turn
So I would sit
Every day
In front of the mirror
And pick myself apart for the world’s consumption

Everyone has always taken what they wanted

I have driven myself insane
Trying to keep fragments of my own
To just hold on to the feeling of being mine
But I have never known how to be that way
And I will give everything I have
Until I have nothing