recovery

This rest is a little bug

that I nurture with the soft meat of my inner elbow and cheeks. 

I hold on lightly while gripping like a beast. 

I am the charge forward when the ball has stopped. 

I am the rain while the lightning soaks the earth fully and completely;

The residue of complex trauma. 

Do I feel grounded? 

While I am looking away,

I am eaten alive. 

When I watch your face fall again and again.

The air feels full

of regret

like air that washes away the taste

of your tongue

and our nights feeling spent. 

So distracted by each other that we no longer breathed apart. 

I am quiet. Waiting. 

I am seething inside. 

This deep feeling of regret

full of your sadness 

like a bowl of noodle soup

that a friend made

and brought to your doorstep. 

Grief. 

The neighbourhood takes on an identity 

of a lover. 

When we fought we didn't stop and made it all the way to the end.

I don't know how to describe

what it feels like to sit 

on the couch next to you. 

Similar to how you 

misplace me,

like I misplace myself. 

The tragedy of loving you 

without an ocean of loss

to bury us. 

We stumble. 

You. Myself. 

Us. 

Let's be in this space. 

Here. 

Where the walls are high. 

And you seek comfort above all. 

There is a landed space. 

And a space behind your eyes, 

heavy and unheard. 

You deserve space. 

[I deserve space.]

When I walk this path,

I walk into the wild. 

There is no protection

except for my own hands. 

forgotten

Don't scream this time
I'll promise you something
To fall asleep to.
We're sleeping on air.
We're breathing in cold ash.
We're falling through time.
You're the pain in my stomach,
The need in my bones.
This is too comfortable
For our cause.
Regret washes us over,

again and again. 

You were lost to me. 

the meekest corner of the thrift store

She wears the clothes of others like a second skin.

The memories like 

tiny buckles and oversized buttons,

sewn on as an afterthought. 

She steeps herself in the past until the skin on her face is freckled.

She speaks to no one

about what the past means to her. 

It wasn't that she lived it wrongly. 

She has no regrets. 

But when they ask her, "what do you want yet?" 

She will say, "more and all." 

After all, 

she has just started to exist.

My anger may rest for a while outside on the porch.

When the call came through

her body was gone;

the slightest tremble stilled 

in the presence of childhood rituals 

like bedtime stories. 

The sirens behind the voice 

she remembered

from turning eight years old, 

ears tuned into 

the sounds of distress 

like a lullaby. 

When she hears the same call now,

she becomes eight years old

and loses her body temporarily. 

Without the playful rhythm 

of interoception 

she is dull; she collects dust. 

He tells her much later

about the trauma that he witnessed. 

He explains how the calls find her. 

He knows the sirens started

a long time ago.