Do you really know me like you say you do?
I don't like existing in memories of others when I cannot remember my own.
You can't possibly remember me.

It makes me so angry when you tell me that,
angry that I can't verify it,
angry that those ideas of me still linger,
angry that my past exists at all.

I want to purge this dissociative self
I used to be from all consciousness,
and it isn't fair that you can still remember her.

I am so mad that you can compare me now to me before
and that you can clearly recollect all the signs.
I am so envious that I couldn't have seen the signs myself when it was happening and that I still can't now.

I envy the way you can tip your sight backward to how I was before and that you can see the progress.
I want to see it too.

I am so angry
and this feeling burns my throat
when you remind me of what you know.

Why did I think you could cure
all the aches and pains
I had held for years and more,
when you were never my remedy?

Every dose I took
was another ******* placebo,
and you'd have thought
I could tell this treatment wasn't working for me.

Did you love me in a past life?
Is that why you made a pact with me
to conjoin this time in a karmic unraveling?

What did you intend to learn from me?
Our energetic ties implied we should have known
how this would all end;
I felt it in the beginning,
that this might not be sustainable,
but I persisted and so did you,
dragging our feet into the trenches.

Did you care what the end result would be?
Was it satisfying enough to watch the soft shell
surrounding us crack?

I'd be such a good girl for you,
making sure to cram and compartmentalize every piece of me
into whatever shape you'd prefer;
I've never known any better.
It's what I've always been told.

If I'm not here to make you happy,
then what is my purpose?
I've never known to take care of myself,
but I would take care of you in a heartbeat.

I don't know how to stop,
I don't know how to love correctly,
and I definitely don't know how to be loved.

If I keep giving,
what does it mean if you give back?
I think I'd feel nauseated knowing
you spent so much energy into me.
I'm not your sink, I'm the output source
and I'd never let it be the other way around.

Have you ever woken up inside a flashback?
Do you know how it feels to be pushed down into your own body after years of being pulled apart?

I awoke many times in a haze,
wondering what year it was;
months ago I finally came to and I thought I was trapped in 2014
and instead of waking to go to school,
like I was so convinced of,
I went to work and went through the motions of something I somehow knew all too well.

How did I go so many years in this separation of self?
I awoke to all of this abundance and responsibility I don't remember creating.
I could have cried out screams of mercy
for whatever stole all these years
to give them back.

I typed away at my computer,
but it all felt so foreign.
I was supposed to be in high school;
I'm supposed to be myself.

I've awoken many times in absolute fear,
not even sure who I am,
where I am,
what time period I'm in.
It's terrifying and I'm so tired of being ripped apart from reality like this.

Have you ever been consumed by a flashback?
Hurled and spit out by the jaws of the past
and regurgitated into the present?
I've never understood why it has to keep happening.

I am tired of living in waking memory;
I want this tortuous cycle to end.

Was I ever really his favorite?
From the words, he spilled,
I would have been inclined to believe it,
but his actions say otherwise.

Was I ever anyone's favorite?
I've been chronically revered but overlooked at the same time.
They spoke so highly of me, for someone so apt to abandon at a moment's notice.

I couldn't imagine him willing to take the time to get to know me,
and yet I expended my energy to know him;
it's funny,
to think I vowed my love to someone so distant.

I have never been the favorite,
I have always been the connecting piece from one person to another,
leading them to each other like a sheep dog with its flock;
I have always been alone,
One way or another.

In the early hours of the morning,
you asked me to marry you;
I pushed it off, taking it as a joke,
but you leapt up from our bed anyway,
and I protested, saying there were no rings in sight,
and yet, you wrapped paper, so delicately, into a ring for me.

From the dim-lit room,
I saw you kneel on one knee to ask me.
I swore you were mocking me,
but you persisted that we elope,
and even then I couldn't take you at your word.

Did you really love me like that?
And if so, why did you leave?

From week in to week out,
the cracks in foundation do form,
and the ceiling begins to leak;
should those in the castle's embrace choose to evacuate?

The lovers huddle in the stillness of their room and contemplate their position,
but something crumbling so quickly needs an equally quick decision.

Dare they take a break and flee from the impending ruin?
And what does it say about them if the structure of their loving home won't support them?

And if the lovers falter
from the tower to the uneasiness below,
will there be enough arms to catch them both?