Status Updates From When You Ask Me Where I'm G...

but my skin was a siren
that was always too loud.

if the words are a
hollowed vessel of what was once a tree growing
within you. if the words are expensive, but leave you
empty when they are not draped across your neck. if
the words are a red heart, a double tap, a closed fist
with a raised thumb. if the words are a responsibility,
a burden, a curse, a dying thing. if the words do not
free you, why do you hold on to them?

if the words hold you hostage, both refusing to
be spoken and refusing to let you leave. if the words
feel like burden, no longer art but obligation. if the
words are a cement cage, forcing you to move only
in endless circles. if the words are an elaborate
arrangement of plates but you are not hungry. if the
words are a butcher’s knife, cutting too deep into all
the parts of you that are tender

if the words are expensive, but leave you
empty when they are not draped across your neck.

i am cynical but i am also
desperate.

Depression is this ghost that looms over my shoulder and nobody seems to believe in spirits

there is no way
to live in a body
on an earth
in a universe
this complex
and not carry
questions in
your pockets
like accumulated
change
i have come to fear
my lack of answers
far less than humans
who claim to have
them all

i am told to stop
thinking so much
and i wonder why
it is that in order to
survive in this world
i must not use
my mind.

i have often known
the heaviest hearts
to recite the lightest words
and the burdenless
do not understand
that to dive headfirst
into oceans like ours
is to surely drown
so we skim the surface
and fill pages to become empty
and tie up our stories carefully
and do not unravel
because minds like these
are not easily stitched back together
when torn at the seams

does water remember
when she is stilled into
silence
all the ways that she can
strangle and devour?
does she recall
when she is vengeful
all the ways that she can
pour life into the aching?

instead of calling for help
we learned to carry the weight
of all these secrets on our shoulders
absorbing pressure in glass-jar bodies
hoping no one would notice.

apologizes for the actions of his fist.
hates his boss but always manages to
swallow his rage and smile.
she wonders how it could be
that she is the only one
who makes him
lose control

don’t get me wrong.
forgiveness and i are well acquainted
but just because she had good intentions
it doesn’t mean she ever kept me safe.