wrong—
no—
not me—
you think me into a shape that splits at the seams
skin folds inside-out
teeth where the eyes should be

your thought is a cage made of guesses
bars bending inward
cutting my ribs each time you remember me wrong
blood pooling in letters you’ll never read

stop
stop
stop
you’re sewing me together with rusted wire
hands too eager, eyes too blind
each stitch a scream I can’t get out of my throat

I am not the doll you built in the dark
I am the rot beneath it
the smell in the walls
the shadow that won’t match your light

think of me again and I’ll splinter in your skull
leave splinters in your hands when you try to pull me out
you’ll bleed thinking my name

wrong face
wrong mouth
you're a coat i found in the street
it smells like rain and someone else’s skin

your thought has my eyes
but they’re glass
rolled back
seeing nothing
still staring at me

i hear your version of my voice
it comes from the wrong throat
all teeth
wet with lies i didn’t tell

stop building me from your scraps
stop filling my body with your hands
like stuffing a dead thing
propped in a corner for display

i’m not the thing you hold in your head
i’m the thing that rots outside it
the thing you wouldn’t recognize
if it tore itself open in front of you

static in my teeth
when you think of me
it tastes like pennies and wet paper
you hold a version of my face
a Polaroid left in the rain
the colors bleed toward the corners
until the eyes are just dark water

you build me in your head with crooked bones
misremember the length of my shadow
give me hands that never fit my wrists
and a smile that isn’t mine
it hangs too wide, like you stretched it
in the wrong dimension

i can feel it—
your thought of me—
moving under my skin
a fish under ice
slipping away when i reach for it
my reflection shatters
before i even know what it looked like

stop dreaming me into the wrong shape
but don’t stop dreaming
i need the heat of your gaze
even if it warps me
even if i don’t survive the translation

someone’s thinking of me right now
but it’s not me
it’s the costume
the wax mask
the placeholder

white noise between our brains
fingers tapping glass that won’t break
maybe if you press hard enough
you’ll touch the outline of me
but not the marrow

you make up my voice
invent my pauses
assign meaning to the tilt of my head
I’m a character in your private mythology
and I don’t know the script

half-formed versions of me
spill out of you
sketches torn from the spine of a notebook
edges curled
wrong lines inked in permanent

stop thinking I’m the thing you built
and then
keep thinking of me anyway

there is a shadow of me
hanging in the air between other people’s words
a sketch someone drew once
and then forgot to color in
you touch it sometimes
with your glances, with the way you form my name in your head
but you never stay long enough to see the edges

i can feel you thinking of me
in the wrong shape
the wrong colors
a dream you half-remember in the morning
where my face is blurred
and my voice comes out of someone else’s mouth

i want to reach into your thoughts
and rearrange the furniture
move the windows so you can see me
without the curtain
without the fog

but you keep carrying the idea of me
a folded paper you never open
afraid it might tear
or worse
that it won’t say what you want it to say

under a bright light you’d find every crooked line I’ve got
not just the ones on skin
but the ones that don't speak unless cornered
the ones that sleep under laughter
wait until silence stretches too long
then rise, flickering, like old film burned at the edges

I keep thinking
there’s something noble in hiding
or maybe it’s just easier to control the story when no one else can read it
my voice stumbles when I try to make sense of the mess
the kind of mess that doesn’t make noise
but hums beneath
like a bad memory that learned how to walk quietly

I think of all the times I turned away from mirrors
or watched myself in reflections that blurred at the corners
windows at night, when the outside is black and the inside is exposed
that’s the kind of light I mean
not a warm glow
but the surgical kind
the interrogation kind
the truth kind
that wants to know more than I’m ready to give

and maybe I am all angles
maybe I am the sketch that never made it past the rough draft
smudged with too many tries
too many redos
too much holding my breath when I should have been screaming

if you saw it
all of it
would you trace those lines gently
or flinch like they might cut you?

the hallway is longer than I remember
but the walls still blink like old televisions
buzzing static prayers, I never meant to say
and maybe that’s the only truth I’ve ever told

I used to think
that graves were for the dead
but I saw you last week
sitting in the shade of one
talking to the stone like it owed you something

dust in your fingernails,
coffee spilled on your shirt
half-smile like a cracked jar
I asked if you were okay
and you looked right through me—
said nothing but “almost”

there are holes in the ground
that match the shape of our names
and the wind knows all of them
it whispers backwards in the morning
pulling memories from my throat
like strings of wet wool

I buried my first version of myself
beneath a playground slide
age seven, maybe eight
he didn’t cry, just sank
quietly, like a stone in jelly

and then the others followed—
the one who thought love was a sharp light
the one who learned to lie like breathing
the one who stopped writing poems

sometimes I wonder
how many funerals I’ve missed
how many of me
are just waiting
for someone to say goodbye

have you found your grave?
or are you still
digging with your bare hands
pretending the mud is gold
pretending the silence is sleep

maybe graves aren’t endings
maybe they’re just
rooms we forgot we built
with all the doors locked from the inside
and no windows,
just mirrors
fogged by time and sweat

maybe we aren’t supposed to find them
just feel them
under our skin
pressing like questions
no one’s brave enough to ask