i’m here
staring down your indifference
pretending i don’t care
until i don’t.
the things that hurt yesterday
don’t hurt quite as much today
and the bleeding has stopped.
it was self-inflicted.

tired of being myself tonight
and if i could,
i’d take it all back:
every word
every moment wasted on
this emptiness.
if we could start again,
i think i would leave all your lessons behind.
a door unopened.
a timeline erased.

it’s time to unlearn

where is my fire?
i used to burn like a fission reactor
taking atoms apart with
my anger
and my desire.
my passion
consuming me from within
under my skin
heat radiating out
all solar flares
and coronal mass ejections.

and now i have gone dark.
no supernovae
no violent eruptions
no annihilation of worlds–
just collapse
and periodic bursts of resignation.
i have condensed and consolidated.
diminished.
i am a quietly dying sun
once brilliant
now busily contracting
folding in upon herself
denying complexity.

although my gravity exceeds
expectations
although my light still shines weakly
in a vast, empty universe,
i recognize the futility in me
the toxicity of appeasement
the terminal honesty
and obsessive
mendacity of compromise.

an unremarkable star
transformed by time and space
into something colder and sadder
and less significant
than ever imagined.

i have excised this
thing that i have let you become
i expel
the hurt
so i can feel something else.

i don’t remember everything you said
and how it made me feel
beautiful after so many years
of invisibility

and i don’t remember the crushing shame
of your sudden
irrevocable rejection
and how my breath caught in my throat
threatening to betray me
to everyone
how my heart stopped beating
when you spat those words at me
with so much disdain
and how to my horror
i fought the urge to beg
because i just wanted to feel beautiful again.

and i don’t remember how i held out hope
praying to an empty god
that i could be redeemed
and how again and again
you ripped me open.

i don’t remember coming back for more.

i don’t remember the image of myself
reflected back at me
of a pathetic
stupid woman
of a needy
desperate girl
because that wasn’t me.
i just wanted to be beautiful
outside my own head
and
to remember tenderness
in the taste of new skin.

i cannot remember you
or your voice
or your smile
or the way you talked with your hands.
like i do.

i cannot remember
how you looked at me and saw
only a reflection of yourself
and how i could not remember why i was so
afraid.
how i could tell i meant nothing to you
and that it hurt more than i’d imagined
it would.

i cannot remember the press of your chest
against my cheek
as i stood within the crush of your arms.
the searing disappointment of your
lies and subsequent escape.

if i could remember this
i might take it personally
that you said these things
and took them all back
for reasons of which i will
forever be unsure.

i cannot remember the sound of your heartbeat
in my ear
the smell of your skin
the bright promise of you
in the dark.

i cannot remember anything
about you.

i don’t know why i’ve tried
to embrace real life
when it is clear that there is nothing
for me there.

i can’t understand
the emptiness at the core of me
there is so much sadness
in this defeat.
it tastes like forever.

some days hurt
like heartbreak and loss
and all the shame settles around you
like a shroud
and each word speaks of regret
each touch feels like ice
and every breath reminds you
that you’ve done everything wrong
again.

these days ache
you are atlas
weakened by the millennia
crushed under the weight of so much life
and so much hurt
and so much cruelty.

you can feel the emptiness in your bones
a lifetime of laying yourself open
like slaughter
like sacrifice
only to be used and discarded
ridiculed and despised.
so much active hatred
in the eyes of others
when all you have ever wanted
was to become real.

how does it feel to wound
the wounded? to break the broken?
does it feel like power?
does it feel like control?
i am not weak but i still bleed

not that it matters.
i will never matter.

i keep picking
at the edges
of this scab;
the wound that cannot heal
until i let hope go.
discard the idea of you.
refuse to chase the mirage.

you are unreal;
there is no connection
no truth.
this is self-immolation
a pristine ode to masochism
and you care nothing
for me
my heart
my self.

you know nothing
of me. you know nothing
but your projections.
i become a human
silver screen on which
you find only yourself.

because that’s all you have ever looked for.

the ocean remembers the shore
when the waves pull back
leaving soft white sands exposed.
she remembers each whirlpool
each eddy
each time the earth shifted underneath her
exhaling heat and light.

she remembers the things the world has forgotten
time wheeling overhead
stars tracing constellations
all of heaven
reflected in the deep green
she is real.
she remembers.

she waits.

but not for you.
not one more moment wasted on you.
your time has come and gone
while you stand
mute and blinded
onshore
lost in your construct
world within world.

this is your reality:
she slips through your fingers
like sand and light.

every time she retreats into the deep
the wind moves and pulls
her back to shore.
she is helpless
slave to the moon
slave to the earth
slave to the air
unstoppable
and
bound
by the things she loves
the things she can never leave.

you slip the shore
borne by the undertow
moving deeper
buried in the light
the salt taste of her:

depth

pressure

release.

you could have been at home here,
everything and nothing
in sync
these secret rhythms
becoming yours.

you did not want this.

move inland.