Two poems for you today, pay attention and see if the context is a little different than you think— you tell me.
But we all have certain things we run from, pieces of ourselves that are hard to separate from the rest; it can be quite the crisis of self that comes when we try. So here you go, for my finals week, here are two very dramatic poems that I kind of love. Especially the second one.
Let me know what you think.
One
It’s exhausting, the way you follow me around
and believe in yourself when you take me down
to drown out all the noise that you put in my head
with words I don’t want to hear, your presence like lead.
It drowns me, suffocates me, while I lose all the love
that I believe can help fix me up; you just push and shove
your hands straight into my chest, the other wrapped around my throat
I can’t breathe a single breath, can’t even stay afloat
before you take me over. It’s no longer a choice to make
I have no other options, only to let you in to take
every last bit of my sanity, I let you under my skin.
Because I’ve played this game, I’ve fought this battle
too many times, and every time
you win.
Two
I sat there watching as you crawled over my skin,
grinning as you gnawed your way through me
past my gritted teeth and screaming eyes, asking you not to.
I knew you wouldn’t listen.
I could feel it in my bones as you hollowed me out,
inch by inch I lost every space I called my own
Photo by Claudia Soraya on Unsplash
to the shaking the hoping, the fading in my body.
While you drained that hope from the inside out,
my vision went blurry, the voices in my head
twisting the volume up and up and up
as high as it could go. The louder you got
the louder I needed to be, hands shut over my ears,
screaming against the cacophony of your voice;
It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay
its—but it’s not okay.
I don’t like the way it feels when you make a home
out of me, make me shake and make me cry,
you make me question why I’m alive
so I can’t answer when someone wants to know
if I’m okay; you take my tongue, you twist it up and
all I can ever seem to do
is let you.
See you Friday.
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