As I was falling asleep
I opened my eyes

And suddenly it felt like the darkness
Was encroaching on me

Threatening to swallow me whole

I couldn’t breathe
I couldn’t think

You always drown my mind...
Even when you're not mine...

We are what we are
I am what I am

Nothing but a replica
Of imagined will
For all this effort
Scrapes don't fade
On porcelain skin

My bed is a box, filling with water when I least expect it
I am asphyxiating
I was fine until I remembered that there's no one here
Being alone is like

There is smoke in my lungs,
But ice on my skin
The fissure in my heart, the great divide
Why does it even bother to pump my blood anymore?

This is not the kind of poem I like to write

Doggy paddle isn't swimming,
It's "active drowning."
The little pieces of information
Learned in the conference room of a YMCA,
Preparation to carry a red tube
And sit in a chair, observing;
To preside over age extremes
Swimming to and fro.

I sit in my chair
Carefully keeping track
As people come in and out of the room.
Someone comes up to me;
I stand up, shake their hand,
And maintain eye contact just as I was taught.
They walk away, leaving me to sink
Deeper and deeper into this chair.

I've lost who I really am
These chains that I've put on myself
The ones I thought would help
Have changed to powerful ocean waves

They're choking me out
So that no one else can hear my desperate screams
I put on mask after mask
Each one a poor imitation of that girl

The girl that would laugh
And enjoyed having fun
Not this one who cries in the bathroom stall all alone
So if you find her, let me know

Here I am
trapped
beneath these waves
as water
fills everything
that you
left
behind.

Gaping holes
torn, slashed, ragged at the edges,
burning underneath
a thousand broken promises,
salt water in a wound
that cannot
(will not)
be healed.

I was
so selfish-
only thinking
of
me,
always
me,
never you,
even though
all I ever did
and have done,
was for you.

But yet,
that was what you said
that night,
with my world
smoldering
crashing
shattering around my shoulders,
dragging me
down
down
down
into this abyss,
flames snuffed out
by the water
I once loved.

And now
I'm here,
haunting the sea,
a siren
with no voice
only
a broken melody
that sounds
like
a love song
on a cracked record
scratched by a razor needle,
with your hands
spinning the
disc.

She hoped that monsters were just shadows sneaking around corners, but the shadows turned around and gobbled up the monsters. The shadows were still hungry, they are never satisfied, always lonely, always wanting more.

They kept creeping in the dark when no one could see them, looking for their next friend, victim, meal.

“Come to the darkness” they whispered to her. “We will accept you. You need no words with us. We understand you.”

Throughout her life, she tried to run from the shadows, always running to be in the light were she could keep an eye on the shadows. Unbeknown to her, the shadows were always there, right behind her, attached to her like a starfish to a rock.

Over time they leisurely engulfed her.
She did not even notice...
Slowly the colour faded from her world...

It felt like the shadows were running into her like a stripped faucet with water running into a sink. She could not stop it. The water rose and began to spill over the sink’s rounded edge. She could not breathe. And then it happened, the shadows were finally drowning her.  She tried desperately to reach for the surface, gasping for air, but the shadows were pulling her down into the abyss. “Don’t fight it” they whispered sweetly in her ear, caressing her soul. She started to panic. The more she fought the shadows, the heavier they became until she did not know where the shadows ended and she began...