it took a few months to recognize my first car.
i’d wander through parking lots reading license plates
as if they were names i should know, but forgot.
i just looked for the college parking pass to show it was my own.
i graduated two years ago.
i still looked for the parking pass last month.

it took a few months to recognize my keys.
they didn’t feel like mine for months;
i was used to touching doors with the reticence of a guest.
i couldn’t tell which unlocked what,
i just looked for the college logo lanyard.
the red fabric may have unlocked as much as the keys did.

it’s taking more than a few months to move on.
i’m still in therapy for the therapy i didn’t ask for
when people couldn’t tell the difference
between the will to live and the will to die.
the keys on my lanyard led to doors that weren’t mine anymore.
none of the other cars there had to leave.
the parking pass laughed as i drove away.

it took a few weeks for the airbags to stop ringing in my ears.
i didn’t hear the sirens until i saw the lights,
kind of like the way i didn’t feel myself being pushed
until the door was shut. i didn’t know what to reach for—
i would have held the steering wheel tighter.
i would have looked a little longer.
i would have watched what they did and not what they said.

it takes longer when i’m in the driver’s seat now.
words need more salt. i take roads more slowly.
the car that was my home through shut and locked doors
was my safety one last time.
i have new keys. i have new doors.
a home where i’m not a guest.
i walked from both crashes, but only one still haunts.
the parking pass was towed away, and i wish i had laughed.

I met a woman in the psych ward and something felt like that should have been me.
She had gauze wrapped around her wrist like I had felt so many times before, but these wounds had kept her here.
I had been sent home.
I never needed stitches, but I couldn't have a needle,
so I was always left with the common thread of being sent home.
I was never taken seriously until one day I was,
but I'd forgotten how to take it any way at all.
The woman in the ward would wander the halls,
hauling her hidden distress in the dressing.
I wondered if she'd also been told 'it wasn't that bad,'
but if she was, she might have been home by now.
Something keeps asking why she hadn't been me.
I was so confused about where they said I should be and didn't know how to prove if I knew where that was.
Dismissed from all urgency by nurses with certainty, but implored by all others who glanced at my wrist;
each party so confident I'd be in hands that were better as long as those hands weren't theirs.
I was scrubbed from this place of belonging while being too stable for the people in scrubs.
Maybe that's why I stay as close as I can to the psych ward while still holding the key card to leave:
I had lingered in limbo too long to know which direction to go. What do I believe? Which loss do I grieve?
I had proved myself too healthy; I had proved myself too sick.
I was a revolving door patient who never got admitted.

I get anxious when I don't have a toothbrush in my purse.
I leave behind the house and the ability to take care of myself if I don't come back.
Every time I get in my car I wonder if it will take me somewhere else that night,
even if I know I'm coming home.
It's different now; I sleep in the same bed most nights and I brush my teeth at the same sink,
but I meet the same eyes that I used to see in different mirrors every day.
I stalled in more restrooms than I could count because every other door was shut.
I learned that Starbucks is better than Tim Hortons; there's a place to put your purse and the water tastes nicer,
and if people see you leaving with a seven-dollar latte they assume you're going to the same place you came from.
I buried my toothbrush at the bottom of my bag.
The baristas would ask about my plans for the day, and if I'd had the words, I might have said, "I'll get back in my car and see where it takes me."
It would have sounded poetic. It might have been enviable,
and I might have felt a little less homeless.
But how dare I say that thankless word--
I was always met with a laugh and a correction: "You'll never be homeless; look at all the places you can go."
And I was grateful, I was grateful, I was grateful,
but they never knew how lost it felt to sleep on different beds and couches and know it was because of how lost you felt.
I was welcomed in every different home except the one I was forced from,
and every different shower I cried in saved me a little bit more.
But everyone was always amused at how prepared I was when I pulled out my purse.
They didn't know it was because I didn't have any other place to keep my toothbrush.

I used to want to be a DJ until I met one.
I used to want to be a DJ until he left my ears ringing with all the things I had done wrong like cymbals in my face.
I used to want to be a DJ because they looked like they were finger painting music on vinyl,
but the one I knew dug knuckles into my tissue-paper chest and called it his job.
I thought a DJ's job was to make art.
I used to want to be a DJ until I learned they etch their fingerprints into your record and forget (refuse?) to wipe them off.
I had his vinyls propped up against my wall. I wanted to rip his name off all of them.
I used to want to be a DJ until I sat in his office listening to the lies he put in his lyrics.
I wanted to find the console and turn the audio down, but instead I looked for him to console me.
I wanted him to sympathize but that too would have been synthesized.
I used to want to be a DJ until I learned they amplify your weaknesses and loop them, loop them, loop them.
I wanted to fade to the background but 'if you ain't redlining, you ain't headlining,'
and I was redlining, I was redlining, I was redlining-
looped and scratched and mixed until I was my very own single,
alone.
my tears the only streaming platform that he could not control.
I used to want to be a DJ until he shut me in my own dead air.
he had other records to make and other albums to fill.
I never did learn what he labeled me.

i know this has been set in the stone of your mind,
but consider otherwise,
for just one moment,
that this could be the most harm you've ever experienced,
and it just may not be your friend at all

i want to be someone who helps.
i want to be someone who hears.
i don't want to be who harms.
i don't want to be one who haunts.
i want to be one with open hands.
i want to be one with open heart

my scars are fading
and i'm afraid
that so will i.