This is what hurt looks like.

This is what pain creates, added that

you are conditioned to feel sad.

Chemicals unbalanced and unchecked,

You’re a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.


The sudden icy tingle of cold

as you move from warm sunlight to shade;

the sudden shimmer before your eyes,

blending into the last sight you wish to see that day.

The sudden jump in your sleep,

before you fall and wake knowing you will, soon;

the sudden lights that dance before you,

before you know they’ll eclipse you as soon

as you are left alone.


These are all the ways you are unpredictable.

These are all the little things you

plead for others to understand.

And all the little things they never will.

Because that is the cruelest blow, the

omnipresent bleed underneath the skin,

the constant broken limb and sickness that

doesn’t heal.

That is the cruelest part of all;

they just don’t understand.


I write and let the frustrations climb the pages;

mountains inked out before me to mark

the journey’s edges.

I write and leave traces of every scar and wound,

praying one day you will find them.

I write to leave it all behind;

leave the roads mapped as far as they have been followed.

I write in order to tell you things I no longer can,

to remind you of what I was, what I did, how

I helped you move on to someone else.

I write to ask you the questions you never allowed me to,

to ask why

how,

who,

when?


This is how I process all the ways I hurt.

So I can avoid the physical cuts and bruises.

So I can gather my defences, to brace another onslaught.

So I can enjoy, love, laugh, grow while my demons

are away, left on quests to search for the proofs they can

use against me; paste on walls in my mind.

I know you won’t understand,

I know you can’t and I have learnt to allow you

to fall short.

But you need to hear some truths regardless.

This is how I process all the ways I hurt.

How do you look at yours?