Old memories and dizzy songs from her childhood dance across the roof of her brain eyelashes dripping tears and hiccuping painful sobs. Hiding in the school bathroom not from bullies but her own fears. Blinking at the reflective yellow tiles she pushes away the yellow bathroom.

Water drips into the rusty ***** porcelain and the mirrors fog from humidity. Gasping for air and resemblance looking down to see that his hands aren’t there.

Fingers trembling and stepping out of the stall, one among over the sink washing the tears from her face and praying for a vacation, vacation from hell, mania, and psychosis infested cranial cavity and fog swirling swarming her.

Worrying about her fate again that a small breeze of nostalgia fluttered in her heart. Thinking a moment past she had someone in her room that she loved. A person of flesh to talk and hug.

She is lonely now. She could not be more different and she has lost the memory-self that come to the state of reality where she is in the high room alone.

They usually come at night
When fighting the battle of sleep
I recall the window, green and purple blankets and sheets
I am a walking video tape
Broken VCR rewinds
Without being touched, my brain is the television on which it repeats

Classroom desk, The Color Purple, Letter one; repeat
2:00, surprised, they usually come nighttime
Video cassette jostled in its compartment, forcibly rewinding
No, please let me go to sleep
The thoughts take my limbs and bind
them to my sides, wishing for the refuge of sheets

How I want to burn those sheets
Maybe the tape would no longer repeat
Take the memories and unfasten
them from my mind. It was never at night
No sneaking into bedrooms, sleep
wasn’t any harder than usual, only rewinding
When we were home alone, rewinding
Inside those sheets
I wonder if he could still sleep
Does the repetition
Haunt him at night?
These memories belong in boxes sealed
in ***** basements like ****** up Christmas presents not meant to be opened, tightly wrapped
Red ribbon on the spool, rewound
like the film tucked away in a cellar without lights, dark as midnight
Upstairs, I am safe, a breeze from the open window blows sheets
of watercolor paper sprawled on the table with repeating
brush strokes. The chair next to the window is a fine place to take a nap.
Here, ill recordings do not interrupt my slumber
Bandage
I’ve read that victims will often put themselves in situations that repeat
the traumatic event. Time is the one thing I cannot rewind.
I sit in a room of strangers filling out sheets
about healthy coping mechanisms. I think of my hard-bedded room; on the wall there is a nightlight

But still. Some nights, it’s on repeat. The boxes open while I sleep.
Some nights my head is still a video tape
They creep up the stairs and into my sheets when I’m not looking. Like tiny spiders that know how to push the << button.

I write this on paper
Because words are too hard
Thy bring back the memories
That I wish were gone

I write this on paper
"Coping", I guess
My go-to source
For feeling my best

I write this on paper
Maybe one day you'll see
That I write this on paper
Because its killing me