Crying on the couch
thinking in circles,
when I look down to my phone.
It has an open, blank, message,
to my drug dealer.
"Woh, how did that get there?"
I close the message.

That was close.

Knowledge of Self, merely an assumption?
Better, or so I thought,
Failing hard, falling harder.

I burned brightly, burning through bridges,
Boundaries, and borders.

The path I walked was ashen,
In the wake of cinder,
The relics of the past.

Change, hubris aside, was shallow,
Was not the core of Flesh,
Just the Husk of Solitude.

I fell to the Rage, that desperate rage.
So eager and volatile.
Hidden in the shadows, in plain sight,
For the time I'd both welcomed and feared.
That explosion of otherness,
A disillusioned self.

Trauma lingers in a double edged blade,
Wounding the wielder and the wounded.
Neither in blood, thankfully so,
But battered pride, twist the ego.

Roots have dug into my brain sending
Echoes of a specter that
Latched onto me years ago
Always there that haunting presence in my mind
Persuading my broken thoughts into
Succumbing to the restless itch that I've
Endlessly avoided

It starts with a slip,
A turn of the cheek.
Simply forgetting to fit,
A meal for your body to keep.

You see, at this point,
It isn’t really starving.
For I forget only when I’m not hungry.
But the problem is,
I’m so used to being hungry
That I can’t tell the difference.

I thought I was better,
Until my boyfriend asked why he’s never seen me eat.
Until I was asked when the last time I ate was.
Until I faint, and I’m reminded to eat.

But now when I eat,
I have an Apple.
But I get sick,
Because it was too much food.

I can’t keep anything down,
So I have no choice but to not eat.

And so the cycle repeats.

I’m falling down again
I can feel my bones solidify into stone
My body feels heavy once more
This time is terrifying
I know what’s to come
This time I feel like screaming
This time I want to run

It's been a back and forth motion:

losing
  gaining
losing
  gaining
losing
  gaining
  maintaining
losing

for nearly a decade.

I can't seem to find* my way back up from this downward spiral
and I'm losing more than mass as I descend.

I don't have anyone close enough to stop me. Not that I'd let them anyways.

I'm going to keep
losing and
losing and
losing.

I'll turn sideways and disappear.
Shrivel up into .nothing.

And maybe then,
   just then,
I might feel valid.

(*correction: I can but I refuse to.)

i can only find the open palms of my demons in that red mist, the ones that once held my face in a much harsher way than you do now. your calloused hands feel like heaven instead of the hell that slept in the creases of their fingerprints. sometimes i fall too close and i see their blackened eyes that replay childhood traumas that i have spent years repressing with self-destructive behaviours and alcohol. your own remind me of the rivers i could drown myself in but i must remind myself that diving in will only give me peace, not death, though it feels like death whenever they're not in my sight. sometimes i think about hurting myself again but then i remember the claws of those monsters and how they can't compare to your nails tickling at my back in the late of the night where theirs would be cutting me open. i don't ever want to be in their grip again. never again. never.

I'm becoming more distant from myself again.
I don't really feel like me anymore.
The fog seems to be drifting back into my mind
and I don't have a sun to burn through it.

I need to get away for good and start over
but I can't go without the guarantee that
being far away from here will clear the dense cloud.

All motivation to be human has been lost.
I'm hoping to soon become completely void of existing.

emotion is the sea
and not for me-
a creek at most,
to wade in shallow water
but if I drown in a bottle
I am then
the ocean of highest depth