i feel like a puppet
a ventriloquist taking control—
i move hopelessly as their fingers
tangle with the strings,

making me dance,

                                    
                    ­                      dance,

      
           dance.

i inhale the things you say.
the frozen words burn my lungs
as my knees reach the ground.
i’m incredibly tired.
                                        still,
i act as a servant,
a lamb to the slaughter.
but this time,
i, the lamb, know what i’m in for.

despite everything i’ve been told to think,
your words are simply more than sound.

thinking back to my days
of endless waiting—
time was a straight line
with jagged edges,
sharp and slender crowding images
made my head go
                  in my hands
and my arm reach over
     the bathroom cupboard.

blood peeking out cautiously
in a fragile line trapped on my skin.
looking down
           at what i had done
truly stung like the blur surrounding me.

if you open any old dictionary
and search for the word “end”
you may find so many definitions
for three letters in the thin yellowing paper
sitting still as they have been for so long.
three letters that will always remain
stained forever as an encumbrance,
forcing me to believe
that everything is but a straight line
that at some point is cut off
and usually gets lost along the way
long before then.

my teeth
              are thick blocks
                                         of white.
that only seem to find pleasure in
interrupting my speech
and my smile.
they chatter while broken
      words
          and phrases
crawl hesitantly out of my mouth.
i carefully mold the definitions
and the
wrenching metaphors
into clay that’ll dry up in the sun, and
      drop
              like a pin.
and i feel my bones come together
in my state that i call my own
                  plucking
           my eyelashes off
clipping the idea of being full grown.

what i see
is a completely separate being
moving in the mirror.
i watch you spit toothpaste
into the sink
and cry off your makeup
that i saw you spend hours on
this morning.
i’m stuck
in a two-dimensional buzz
and i watch my body do the things
i should be doing every day.

only sometimes i find myself still punishing the same ill feeling, creeping up my back and around my spine. this is the kind of hindsight that sits on my shoulder and watches me breathe. how else do i get rid of my headache? i have been something of a promised wish, a shallow pool of sin in the very center of my body. and it feels like i'm buried alive, like there's thick mud clogging my throat, like i'm suffocating from some other sickness. what cannot fool me is what breaks me the most... what strikes me the hardest comes from far, far away.