sometimes i wonder if my trauma is still after me. i sit in my bed and try not to count each chipped paint mark on my wall by two’s and how many knots in my stomach that tightened in the last hour, i wonder if my trauma is still alive even after all of those years ago

i fall like the autumn leaves, the same ones that crunched under my shoes when i was thirteen, what do you do when the music finally stops?

you could start it over and replay the same record or you could put in a new one, they say old habits die hard but mine keep showing up at my doorstep like old family coming home for the holidays, except they overstay more of their welcome and never like to be put to bed.

maybe the punch line is that i don’t really know when to stop either, that i don’t like the feeling of my heart not being in my own mouth. every time i get an option to put in a new record, i put the old one back in, even if it’s damaged and has too many faults.

i wonder if my trauma likes to be held, because when i was fourteen, i refused to be touched at all.

and i can’t help but wonder if my trauma ages along with me, because sometimes i still see the same little kid with guns for hands staring right back at me wondering who the hell i am.

i like to think that soon i’ll grow tired of that record and put in a new one, let it play out and have myself enjoy new music for the first time again, and then when it dies, i can give it a proper burial and move on to a bigger label

and maybe i’m capable of doing so right now,

but my trauma likes to sit at the edge of my bed & play that same **** record as a theme song of my wake.