What they don't tell you-they, the general public, society, doctors, your best friends-
Is that a hospital is more than four white walls
It exists beyond the doctors in starched coats hanging to their knees
Beyond the mutterings of schizophrenic people as they walk by
Beyond the daily pills given and tongues pulled up directly after
Beyond the strip searches, the vitals taken, the evening bed-checks
A hospital lives in stigma
Stigma where you are the outcast, the
Mental patient, the
Crazy one.
A hospital lives in your mind,
In the tormented nightmares you wake up from
Shaking and drenched in sweat
Sheets twisted between white fists
A hospital lives in your gait
The way you swish your hips away from people sometimes
Because you don't want them to know your darkest secret,
Know where your barriers form, where they wall the world around you.
A hospital lives in the faint scars attached to your wrists,
Your stomach
Your thighs
Your calves
Your heart
A hospital becomes a sort of monster in this way
It rots in your memory
Tells you about that one time when things almost ended
Tells other people that you are off, but not in a way anyone can see
Unless they look hard enough
A hospital
Is supposed to heal wounds, Not
Create them.

i was holding the g u n
but you were the t r i g g e r

Your kisses were poisonous
your hands felt like knives
taking what you want
opening me up, revealing everything
without even asking me
dissecting me
violating every inch of my body
you looked at me with your eyes but the rest of you devoured me
distracting me with your sweet words
I never stopped you
I didn't know my own body was worth fighting for.

I inhale as much as I can, until my lungs are full
and inhale again to fill the void.
I hold it there until my brain begs me to release, and I do.
I hold my head under water with only my mouth and nose free to breathe
And listen to my heart beat
and nothing else and then I hold my breath as long as I can until it hurts and my heart starts to panic,
my brain doesn't know what to do so it doesn't do anything.
Everything becomes quiet
And calm like the sea after a storm
or the sky before one
Then I breathe, but it feels like dying.

she stares at the bottle of pills
sitting calmly on the table
as she picks up a paintbrush
and begin her painting

her choice of colour was red
always shocking red
her canvas was smooth
smooth as a baby's skin they say

but no one will ever know
the days she spent locked up
in her room painting
her life away

that her canvas was her skin
the paintbrush was the blade
the choice of colour was her blood
and she couldn't stop

It's not simple
It's rusted nails breaking skin
Lightning flashes in a hurricane
The crack of a body hitting the pavement

It's the pinch of nails in your palms
The tremble of your legs when you think they're watching
The ache in your chest when your binding is too tight
But not tight enough

It's not a stormcloud, it's a typhoon
It's not a discomfort, it's torment
Its the steel beams in your chest snapping under pressure
Your skeleton crumbling so maybe your chest will be flat then

But all those rusted nails and steel beams
Heated by the fire and fury of passion
Remold into something new

Someone who can stand a bit straighter
Speak louder
Tip their chin up
And show the world who they are
Who he is.

Dysphoria is a skyscraper crumbling to ash
But it's also scraps of wreckage
Reminded into a safe haven
A place of rest
A place of comfort

Extra lessons after school
Explaining how you are not yourself
Such small words used so simply
Cut like knives through your chest
'She'

Paraphrasing arguments
Summarizing discipline
Faceless family with too much on their own plate to understand
Why you don't like what's on yours
'She'

Tightness in your chest not because your binding is too small
But because it isn't
The name of a state has never hurt so much
'She'

You look in the mirror and grimace
Shower so fast you don't have to see yourself
Roll their words in your mind until you're leaning over the toilet
'She'

Humming summer days fade into early autumn nights
Long days enforce what they have already told you
Dress code laws repeated by tongue
And hasty dressing in changing rooms
Hoping they won't notice you
'She'

But you are an active volcano
There are wolves in your chest and lions in your brain
And they can't change you
You get home and look in the mirror and sign into skype
A simple word that only drops one letter
Has never had so much power

He.

If I had only known

You would still be snug in your're bed

Your laughter would echo through the room

Instead of just memories

If only my words could have shaped the blades of shears

And cut you free

To live such a lonely life

The mask upon your face done up too well

Doubts plague my thoughts and poison my heart

I wish you wrote

How was I supposed

How you could do this, I will never know

I would have liked to say

I Need to say

Goodbye


Copyright©2015 Kelly Chase
All Rights Reserved

you robbed me,
at the tender age
of non-consent and
bony knees from
something i will
never win back

and i'm not
talking about
virginity anymore