if i could visit my younger self
i would go back to the day
when the laugh of lions
didn’t scare me away
into a world

i was trying to leave astray

a world that once;

smoked me up whole
making swimming pools
out of my tears
that’d be dusted
off of my cheek
into ashtrays

just for the narcissist’s
around me
to feel at peace
drinking from the sea
of pain they ripped me apart in
because they only knew
what they had bled into me