It has been 10 years since I’ve first seen your face
and, around your ankles, the weight of  generations
of blood that bit their tongues behind silent lips.
It has been 10 years since I accepted that I was
never going to be just as ‘happy’ as other girls,
I was an observer behind the windows when all
I really wanted was to go out and play.
I hated you—no, I loathed you--but that could not
be true because you didn’t let me come close
to feeling so human. You stole birthday parties from me,
you stole my mornings as I laid in bed, unable to
move, crushed down by the burden of you.

It has been 8 years since I detached myself from
this body, when I decided nothing could destroy me
quite like you. I threw myself from tall buildings,
hoping that someone would care enough to catch me.
The ground hurt worse and worse each time.
You taught me that being suicidal does not have to be
an active effort. That its undertones lie in the
carelessness of crossing the street without looking,
That it is in the silence of distancing myself from
every friend I had because ‘it just makes it easier’ if I was alone.

It has been 4 years since I allowed myself to admit
that I simply could not carry your body alone.
I refused to be ashamed of you because you
were never my choice. I can still remember the
way my mother’s eyes rimmed with tears as she
realized just how long you have been residing in this
household.  Since that day, you began fade. You disappeared
the way the monsters under the bed retreat from
the flashlight. Your presence was much more overbearing
breathing down my neck than when I looked you in the face.
But even now, sometimes I find your fingerprints pressed
against my window, and your glazed eyes gazing back
at me in the mirror.