do you remember when you were 16?
when you started down the 9 month long, deep, and dark hallway?
with the mirrors and the countless black doors with hopeful golden knobs?
Or how comfortable in your claustrophobia you became?
Do you remember how you didn’t recognize your own reflection?
Or how you felt every time you opened a new black door to a new dark abyss of a grown man?
and how you thought an abyss could fill your empty heart?

do you remember the bittersweet helplessness every time the abyss wrapped its fingers around your throat?
and how you thought that the feeling was making you whole again?
And how when their fingers slid down between your legs, maring your thighs,
you felt disgustingly important?
do you remember the room?
The one where you gave the first abyss your youth under false pretenses?
do you remember how the color of the walls reminded you of your nana’s sweet potatoes,
or maybe the color of your parents’ bed sheets that used to swaddle you in serenity?
Do you remember how the way the abyss spat words
like “sweet” “tight” and “young” so sharply that they stitched your skin into the comforter?
and how the gossamer motel pillow cradled your sick head,
covering your ears and almost seemed to whisper “this is the beginning of the end”?
do you remember the guilt and shame you left that room with?
How empty your body felt, how vacant your mind was?
How hollow your body sounded once it hit the ground?