It haunts me.
No matter what I do,
it seems the **** brown eyes never shut.

I can hide fairly well during the day,
unless it finds me in the instructor grasping my arm
(to get my attention)
or in a friend who playfully puts his arm around my
(neck not the neck).
And they don’t know that they have caused spots
in front of my vision and a barely suppressed
panic.

Baths are solace,
I scrub it away until I’m raw.
I shed it from my being in
red swirls that taint the inner walls of a porcelain
bed
(Hah, it never used a bed).

I **** in the heat from the scalding water
in hopes that it might burn out my temporal lobe
and destroy for good the memories that
wake me up at three am in a cold sweat
and a muffled scream
and the inability to remind myself that it is not,
in that moment,
robbing me of serenity and innocence and a full night’s sleep.

And God, why can the past feel so present?