The outline of your jaw tells me stories I spend days questioning. Your tongue, my mind makers of their own demise.

All I ever ask for is honesty- When the dark parts of you encased your spine leaving you without a backbone I was still here, holding you up.

But you chose deceit instead of honor. These lies they spill from your mouth like the trickling of a well and I am consumed by the sound. Repeating and repeating- How can you not see the impact?

You are an ocean of love for me but cannot seem to keep me from drowning- I cannot trust a goddamn thing And as the waves return to the sea, your words give way to silence.

She has been lacking all of her life. A drought inside her chest, no one has been able to sustain her. She tries to flourish but no conditions are adequate. They pull and pull at her roots and say they’re doing the best they can. But they’ve never known how to care for her- she is all petal and leaf and they are just budding. She tries to help them too, to grow roots, but they pick and pick and wear her down.

She wishes to be a garden, full of life and color and bouquet.

She just wants nourishment, to feel strong, to be seen. But no one will give her what she wants bc they are all lacking.

The thirst for life grows strong in her soil- all she ever wishes for is rain, is something to make the soil softer, so she didn’t have to work so hard to thrive. She wants to be washed away.

Maybe one day it will storm and these wishes will fall like rain. And maybe then she can finally feel full.

Cold tile floor. I am reminiscing on things I haven’t remembered in years. The nostalgia sticks to the roof of my mouth. I try to imagine what normalcy would taste like. How it would feel on my tongue. But instead I was gifted lost memory. It invaded my retinas and caused a brand new awakening. There was no person before the trauma- there was only someone who was less. But I woke up. Realized there was more. And let the imagery paint my amygdala a sharp, pointed, silver that drips down my spine whenever I see a face that looks like yours. I want to go back to dreaming that life is better than this. I want to go back before the memory. But it is too late now. A heavy pillar of “this is no longer my body” dissociation envelops me. I want to be at peace. I want a spiritual awakening. I want to know things are better than this. I want to move past it. But there’s still metal in my mouth from biting my tongue so hard it bleeds. This will never not be heavy.

I see the wings of birds and I imagine someone will love me. I imagine someone will come along and help me face my fears but no ones there. I grip the steering wheel and try to regain agency over my eye sight but dissociation cripples me. I name the colors of the signs I see and place the smells that enter my nose. All I feel here in these moments is a nagging at the back of my neck. One that prickles your spine and reminds you, you’re alone. I take a deep breath. I try to remember what love feels like. I hope that feeling will infiltrate the loneliness but it never does. Stuck wishing for a light at the end of the tunnel that never comes.