Dramatics aside, I am healing
Learning to drink the rainwater as the sky falls
And learning that the sky falling is only gravity
If I fall with it, I can pick myself up
Knocked-out teeth and bloodied knees
Still breathing

should've seen it coming from a mile away,
saw it coming but pulled the covers up over my eyes,
suffocating but reveling in the warmth
as if i could ever have anything good
as if anything good could last
i thought you were
forever
for real this time
i thought i grew out of **** like that
guess i'm dumber than i thought

let the embrace of naivety rock me to sleep
cloak me in the past
in days before i was weak
let me hold the stars
for just one more night
let me rest for real
let me wake up unafraid
to the sound of a city i know

im doing it again and i crumble
take it, take it, take all of me
throw my heart at you, pour out my being
i try to reclaim myself with distance but only succeed in isolation
i say "i can't do this" like this is my purpose
like i am nothing more but a resource to give with no source to replenish
i hang onto the tiny fractured pieces of myself and constantly get cut on the shards
i make promises like a death sentence
i say "i can't do this" and crawl back into my cell away from everything i need because
i am needed
needed and given and taken and used up
and i need
but when i need i am grovelling, overflowing, and still trying to give with nothing left of me
somewhere along the way i convinced myself that i need to be needed
but i've been serving purpose all along
i exhaust myself with being needed, with putting myself forward even when i am not asked for
i need to be able to need
i drain myself dry of affection, passion, compassion
i will not eat for days, i will wear my binder for days straight
i will put everything away for you like a guardian
like i could ever be anything but a broken thing with a mask
trying to fluff up my chest to seem large enough to take care of anyone who needs me
i have been walking on broken legs and i think they healed wrong
i have been tearing out the same stitches over and over again, bending over backwards, contorting myself
i am so afraid to speak in anything but metaphor because i don't want to shatter this, show my underbelly, cave in to my own weakness
i don't want to say i need more than this, that is how i get broken, that i how i am discarded
i don't want to show my marred skin and remind you that i am bleeding, too
i don't want to be anything but a shelter for you
i will continue you to tear myself apart in chunks, crying
take it, take it, take all of me

i am carefully stacking building blocks in uneven patterns
trying to keep going up
and i know i said i'd be there but if you lean against me i will topple into pieces again
i have to accept the truth that i am not strong
i am finally learning to take care of myself and it is lonely and it feels selfish
and i hate breaking promises
but i cannot be an anchor when i have no hold on the ground
i am a tightrope walker with shaking knees and two left feet
you say it's okay in a way that lets me know it isn't
and i stagger on the line
please, please, please
i'm trying to stay alive

with my head in my hands i count my breaths
name 5 things you can touch, 5 things you can hear, 5 things you can see
can i see that? is it there? is it really? is it really?
the way i ebb and flow
the sights behind closed eyes
whispers of foggy memories
in 2 3 4, out 2 3 4
try to catch my body where it slips outside the lines

2 AM on another night when I cannot settle down to sleep
The sun bursting from my fingertips, I tense and relax my shoulders,
Try to focus on the feeling of soft blankets, odd silence, hot room
Anything real and in this moment
Because I am slipping into
Fifteen thousand worlds contained thinly within this skin
Like fifteen thousand lives
So much energy
Souls in mason jars
I am crackling, fuzzy at the edges, burning burning burning
I cannot hold everything within me,
I am aching, chest-deep in grief missing loved ones from different lifetimes
Reaching out towards the static-y edge of reality like I could touch it, pass through it,
Push through the walls of my own body
Release this energy in waves
And if I could scatter myself across all of existence,
Maybe I could finally sleep.