I carry a hum that was never even mine—
It's nested behind my own teeth just pacin’.
It twitches within the folds of my thoughts.
And slips into rooms that I have no place in.

The face in the faucet, it watches back,
Not accusing, not kind. But still in my sight.
Waiting to see if I'll either blink first,
Or just admit I’ve been sleeping upright.

There’s a dark ritual in my own pretending.
Though the stillness isn’t staged at all.
I’m not rehearsing the way that I'll answer.
These questions, I just hope that they never call.

The lightbulb that hums, sick of carelessness—
And sick of flickering knowing I never mind..
Even my own shadow has memorized,
The way I don’t breathe, act, or move right.

I fold my hands up in the wrong directions.
I acknowledge nonexistent people with words.
There’s comfort inside this cold dissonance,
Like that perfect chord that's too broken to be heard.

Time doesn’t pass me; it floats or reruns.
Moments just drip right back to no form.
I stir up the air just to prove I exist,
Forget why I did it, then stir up some more.

The consequences? I can't say they crush me.
It’s different than that—it’s odd, and so patient.
It’s like taking the breath that never finishes,
But insists trying again, now knowing it's forsaken.

People like to ask me how I look so tired.
I wish I could answer with a diagram,
Of how feeling nothing can cost everything.
Or how much it weighs to not know who I am.

I don’t want forgiveness, and I don't need saving.
I Don't even truly value status or wealth.
But I’d value not having to constantly carry,
This overgrown stagnant absence of myself.

To look upon oneself
And find a citadel of half-wrought
Miseries and wounded passions
Where the birds all wore masks
Of hide and gleaming fixtures

Birds that enter upon a pile
Of stiff and tangled limbs
With heads, mouth open
Groaning cries of
Pain, as their teeth are torn
Collected to create nests
In which those enamel buds
Burst into seamless streams
Of bloodied skin

Curving together, crossing to form
A twisted leather medusa
That blooms rusted buckles
Which glisten in the sky above that citadel
In the place of stars for those citizens
To pray between a leviathan chorus of agony.

I am weird  
Born weird  
And in the desperate urge not to be  
I tried to take another form —  
A shape made from a mold that wasn’t mine.

And the pain of not fitting into what was expected off me…  
Turned into despair.

Claustrophobic, crushed  
Inside a mold that was never made for my shape.

And the pain?  
The pain of the molds  
Was greater than the despair itself.

Still, I go on
Still…  
Weird.

The weighted blanket,
I wasn't meant to carry,
layer after layer,
of burned threads,
leaving stains where they are,
for it wasn't made for my bed.