you have to teach yourself how to look in the mirror again.
you have to teach yourself to feel love again.
you have to remember what is like to love and risk in the same bow.

to not ruin dinner parties and make shared space an awkward distance,
is to contain everything in a bottled jar.
whether it be because they heard it shatter, or they were cut by shards,
they saw what you spilled onto the floor.

but you have to train your eyes to not cut your body to pieces at every glance,
train your nails to not scrape across skin at every reflection.
you have to practice to not let your bones break in silence
again.

i held my head up,
propped up against false ideas,
and naive hopes.
I dreamt I came back to you.
everything repeated.
I found solace in the cold feeling of blood dripping from my fingertips,
stumbled upon comfort in a dark room with a light year between us.
and your love was only something I earned with compliancy,
and I continued to reach for fire knowing the burns would outweigh the warmth.
but if I am to pretend that I can cross a light year,
I will stride through dark bedroom after dark bedroom if it means I can find comfort
living in between your blows.
and if I am to pretend that what I consider living is of quality,
I will live in the light that comes before and after
your strikes bring darkness.
and if I live in my daydreams,
without end,
I will always split my skin to remind myself I bleed.
I will always reach for the flame to know that I burn.
I will always cross light years of nothingness to feel the comfort that hides in the dark.
I will live in the light years of nothingness,
I will come from nothingness,
I will be reborn from the ashes of what has burnt me.