Big parts of ourselves are based on what we know best
What we do
Who we love
Where we are comfortable

The safety of familiar

When a rock the size of a delayed trauma is thrown between those cogs
The machine is still capable of continuing the way it did before
Something just makes it break that bit more
Quietly camouflaged beneath the surface of certainty

Everything now slopes to subtle disarray
As if the plates you had been balancing this whole time have suddenly stopped spinning
And the poles are threatening to snap under the pressure

I have separated myself into sticks and stones
Promised to break my own bones with every unstable step I take towards something I’m blind to seeing shadows of

Talking about it is impossible
It comes out in tongues of unintelligible
Crashing on tired ears too kind to tell me how badly they need a break

Discovering that who you thought you were isn’t who you can keep being
Makes me envy anyone who has had their identity stolen by an outsider

Constrictions come with self analysis
My body now moves through an ever-changing state of inconsistency
My figure defined by dislocated assumptions
Curves contract the changes in all the wrong places

Worries spread their seeds under an ocean of unnoticeable
Trust is now a stranger in my own home
who has figured out how to cut their own set of keys every time I change the locks

Blame is a fallback and the only ones to place it on are those who taught you everything you thought you knew

Heaviness is a weight I can’t brush off my shoulders
I carry everyone else’s burdens on my back because at least it is something I can be good at
A care taker who neglects to take care of herself

Eroding with every passing hypothetical
Every second thought
Every doubt
And every 'what if'

My impermanence is solidified in the knowledge that where we came from will soon call us back

Constellations can’t hold conversations but at least I know they won’t worry half as much

‘Nothing is permanent’ is one tattoo I can’t remove with laser surgery

So now I look for the missing parts of myself in others
In sizes and figures and numbers

What I am not is always something I could become
There’s always been room for improvement
and the empty space is running low on oxygen

Comparison has her cruel hands wrapped around my throat with a thirst I’m incapable of quenching
Self-deprecation isn't attractive
Insecurity isn't ****
Sharing so many similarities with someone who is everything better than me has turned itself into an internal torture device
an omnipotent ‘almost’ that lingers with every non-existent like-minded interaction that will never happen

I place my worth on the pedestal of peoples perceptions

Nightmares show reruns every second night
of the possibilities that now manifest themselves in the lining of my limbs
Leaking toxins that won’t go as far as my throat in case someone else overhears them

An unspoken competition for admiration and attention
The hollow has started to build scaffolds in my stomach for further renovations.

Easing it is a process
I seek shelter in laughter and forcing to forget

And loneliness has become a friendly companion in their absence

Afloat with overthinking until it jumps overboard
Dissolves transparent in glass coloured water

And drowns in it’s own pretty poison