Light Filters In: Poems

by Caroline Kaufman

it was like dipping my toe into a pool of sadness, oblivious to the fact that I would soon be submerged.

I’ve spent so much time trying to become who I should be that I lost myself along the way.

I have come to the conclusion that I am a walking paradox, a mismatched mix of innocence and experience, a bottle of oil and water constantly being shaken. I overthink the details. I miss the big picture. I am a perfectionist. I am a procrastinator. I have strong opinions. I am indecisive. I am stubborn. I apologize too much. it’s not physically possible to be like this. there is a reason oil and water separate no matter how many times you shake them back together. I am black and white dots in a body shaded gray, and I don’t know which part of myself is the truth anymore.

in a world of covered ears and mouths taped shut, this is my cry for help.

I am going stir-crazy inside my skull, peeling off the wallpaper with short, bitten nails. there are no emergency exits here: I am left to claw myself out.

my head is the one that’s guilty, but my soul is always blamed.

it’s survival of the fittest, not everyone will thrive. we’re pushed so far that we go against the instinct to survive.

venus: can you hear my vertebrae cracking under the stress? can you see my shoulders caving in under the expectations? can you feel my skin splitting and the magma pouring out? I am nearing the inevitable. my spine will give out. my shoulders will snap. my skin will break down. I can only withstand so much.

I work so hard to be the hero. but then I sabotage myself, picking out poisoned apples and eating them like candy. I am the antagonistic protagonist of my own story.

I am a rough draft; I am here to be revisited and revised.

I don’t remember when my life turned into a series of secrets I swallow down every time they try to come back up, a collection of russian nesting dolls taped shut so that no one gets inside. I have become trauma packed inside intrusive thought packed inside scar tissue packed inside brain tissue packed inside skull. I have become an ever-growing ring of defenses so that no one can find what is at my core.

I am lovable.

somehow, you got into my brain when you called me perfect, but I couldn’t believe it all the beautiful things you saw were never there; for I was filled with sadness and pain I was worthless. I no longer thought I meant something. everyone told me I couldn’t. and one day, that was all I believed, even when you told me I could. I was a failure. I couldn’t believe when you said I was special. I told you not to. but, you kept trying even though I was a mess. run away. I can’t believe you didn’t the day you first met me (a year later, I read it backward)

a pillow is not a tissue or a shoulder or a therapy session. but you can cry into it. a journal is not a friend or a hotline or a therapy session. but you can vent into it. poetry is not an intervention or a prescription or a therapy session. but you can heal with it. first steps are always more important than they seem.

I’m not comfortable in my own skin. I’ve been told there’s far too much of it.

ninety-nine percent of every atom in your body is empty space. ninety-nine percent of this page is blank. our existence (our poetry) (our universe) relies on nonexistence.

I remind myself that poets always have been just people who think too much, who feel too much, who soothe their aches with the only thing that makes sense: words.

I know you want to drown yourself in the sadness. it’s comforting to let it surround you, heart pulsing, lungs aching as you feel it overwhelm every inch of your skin and diffuse into your cells. but I hope you know sadness is a revolving door. once you’re in it, letting the sadness take you around and around and around, it won’t stop on its own.

you’ll just keep going around and around and around. that’s why you need to fight to stop it, fight to stop spinning, fight to get out. get out of that infinite sadness. get yourself out of that goddamn door. revolving doors feel relentless, but I promise there is an exit, a surface to the sadness you are drowning in. there is oxygen waiting to fill your lungs and diffuse into your cells.

the closet is more of a prism than anything. it’s okay if you haven’t come out yet. you are still refracting.

there are times that I am doing so well, I stop taking my meds. and suddenly I feel like the light switch has flipped off. and suddenly I feel like I am not better because of my hard work. and suddenly I feel like a fraud. I try to remind myself that the brain is an organ,

that this is a disease, that diabetics need insulin and no one thinks of that as cheating. I try to remind myself that this is not a boost, this is a treatment. so I swallow my pride along with my pills and let myself get better.

I’m made of four dimensions—space and time, heart and soul I am my own universe; infinite and whole my skin is not a boundary, I’m too much to be contained more than person, more than words, I cannot be explained

you can’t root yourself in the ground, hoping the world will grow around you. you were made to do more than hide in the shadows of another’s leaves.

this year, I fell in love with myself. I told myself thank you. I’m sorry. it’s okay. thank you for fighting to survive even when I don’t want to. I’m sorry I blame you for things you can’t control. it’s okay that you’re not perfect I will love you anyway. now, I look at my face in the mirror instead of my body. you are the most important person in my life.

when I think of love, I think of pluto and charon, the dwarf planet and its moon. she does not allow her life to revolve around his. instead, she takes his hand and they orbit each other, moving through the night sky. both on their own paths, but pulled together as they tumble through the nothingness. when I think of love, I think of gravity working both ways.

I will not call myself the earth, and you the sun. I do not orbit around you, helplessly falling and spinning around you as the center of my universe. that is not love. love is when I am pulled toward you and you are pulled toward me. this is me stepping into your gravitational field. not to orbit around you, but with you.

CAROLINE KAUFMAN—known as @poeticpoison on Instagram—began