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Jul 2013
If You Were To Ask Her..
She Would Tell You It Wasn’t A Suicide Attempt .
She’d Say Her Blue Lips And Limp Limbs Were Just A Side Effect Of The Pills.
Like An Entire Bottle Of Oxy-Cotton Would Make Her Chase That High Even Higher,
It Was Hard Enough Learning To Walk On Shattered Souls.
She Was Trying To Levitate.
Hover Above The Ground, She Was Begging The Sunrise To Call Her Skyward.
Body Wrapped In Shades Of Ultra-Violet,
Scalding Cobalt,
Empty Indigo,
The Perfect Skylight Shade,
The Taste of Ocean Waters,
She Was Trying To Drowning All Her Those Scars Inside Of It.
Swallowing Them,

Some Beautiful Disaster.

She’ll Tell You It Was An Accident.

That Her Body Had Laid Down Beside Me.
Rested.
Heavy Hearted And Empty.
Between One And Two AM, Sixty Minutes Of Silence Between Us, I’ll Promise You
I Was Just A Child Then.
All I Knew Was That I Couldn't Sleep Without Her, She Had Fed Me Plates Full Of Co-Dependency, Curled Tight Around Me, Told Me It Was Her And I Against This World.

I Believed This.

Her Addiction Was Chasing Her.
Angry.
Like A Storm.
She Was Self Medicating, Hiding Under Box springs, And Bed Sheets, Inside The Basement Of Her Own Depression. She Had Pulled Me Through Rooms Filled With Lost Eyes, Laced Fingers With Enough Hands,
Repeated The Serenity Prayer So Many Times, It Was Stitched Into My Cerebellum.

I Was Raised in The Play Rooms Of Churches, On Sunday Night, Narcotics Anonymous Meetings, A Novocain Numbness To The Same Voices, On Burnt Coffee And Stale Oatmeal Cookies, Sponsors And Sobriety Chips, Seven Days Sober, With Some Applause.

They Told Us To Always Keep Coming Back.
That It Works If You Work It,
If You Pulverize It, Break it Down, Devour It. And Destroy It.
And To Always Destroy What Destroys You.
So She Was Tearing Her Own Body Limb From Limb, Separated Skin And Bone, Shedding Her Skeleton.

My Mother Would Tell You She Had Wrapped Her Body Around Me.
Half Human, And Almost Gone.
I’d Tell You He Had Woken Us Up Too Early In The Morning, Somewhere Between The Bleakness Of Dusk And Dawn, And They Had Taken Us To The Hospital.
The Smell Of Bleach And Newborn Babies,
Pumped Her Stomach, Pulling Out Every Ounce Of Self Depravity She Had Tucked Inside Of Herself.

If You Were To Ask Her, She Would Tell You It Wasn’t What It Looked Like.

But I’d Tell You She Had Overdosed On Self Destruction, Smothered By The Box She Had Trapped Herself In.

And I’d Tell You She Had Laid Down Beside Me.
Allowing Herself To Leave Me, Always So Alone.
So Know This Destruction By Name, Press It Against My Palms, And Wrap Me In This Honesty. Baptize Me In This Salt Water, Sting My Open Wounds, My Burned Flesh, Like Branded Skin,
Scared For The Rest Of This Eternity.

I’d Tell You She Hadn’t Left A Suicide Note.
Didn’t Need To.
Just Remember What Kind Of Depravity She Had Written Out, Spelled Each Stanza On The Bed sheets Between Us, When Mommy Fell Asleep Beside Me That Night.

I’d Tell You That I Could Have Woken Up Beside Her The Next Morning. And She Wouldn’t Have Been There.

Taken, Savagely, In The Middle Of The Night.

At Six Years Young, Could Have Threaded My Fingers Into Her Hair, And Begged Her To Wake Up.

I’d Tell You She Wouldn't Have Been Able To.

She’d Tell You, Atleast She Had.
I apologize for the capitalization. This piece is hyper-personal and I hope my message is clear, and I hope it resonates.
Leah Rae
Written by
Leah Rae
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