"Grey, I wish I was you!
You're so happy!
You never give up!
You never struggle!
How do you do it?"
Daily, I get told this.
Always saying thank you,
as if my vocabulary bit my tongue,
spitting something else out,
someone else into my place.
My throat burns with screams
I can not release,
as if my own carbon dioxide suffocated my thoughts,
leaving a waste of capacity within the room.
This paint consumes my face,
concealing any trace of reaction
that I want to give.
That I need to detoxicate from my chemical unbalance.
I want to speak
but the flood of anxiety
grasping at my air,
makes me too terrified to be heard.
If I was heard
no one would believe it was me.
They would all look around,
and say nothing,
worshiping the silence I yet to give.
The consequences hide behind the lines,
that my mind can't bend.
The ventilation of my corrupted system
backslides into error,
shutting down the coordination
of my world to come.
Turning my everything
against the collapsing forgotten,
that I didn't raffle for.
I didn't sign up for this
scenery that rotates my sights to the
desperate calling
of a separating cell.
"You look so different, Grey. Have you lost weight?"
Oh, thank you for confusing
my sorrow
as cackling ossein
that lost all their symbolism
as a whole.
Why satisfy the ocean
if the waves tug between
the used and abused.
How did my appearance affect the way
vitality takes place
between the lines
of an open book
that I elope
with the desperation
of being found,
Being saved.
“Why do you sleep so long,
even though you went to bed at 7:30?”
I don’t sleep for the sake of depletion from the world.
Sleep calls from the numbness attached to my dangling limbs,
the rumination of death,
but somehow,
still isn’t convinced.
Why bother to contrast me
to the markings of the sun,
if only to be controlled by the skin.
"Sweetheart, why are you so quiet? You're never quiet."
This was meant as a slam poem, by the way!!
Written around November 2017.