metaphorically, m.k.

Why have you never loved yourself the way you try to love others? You turn out your empty pockets, dishing out your pennies and crumbs in the name of relationships. You’re a glass with a crack in it, dripping slowly until there’s nothing left to give. But what would happen if instead of running from yourself, you turned inward? What if you were someone you ran towards? You’ve comprised yourself of pieces of all the people who broke you, leaving nothing for yourself. Unrecognizable, like a piece of artwork from middle school, full of silly scribbles you can’t name now. You can feel the familiarity. You can search for a home in other people, but you’ll still have to face the truth when you’re alone. I dare you to flip through the pages of your brain and annotate your thoughts. Figure out what’s real and what can be left behind. Hold tight to what feels true, and trust your gut to get you through. Hard times, long days, and all of life’s ebbs and flows will never stop, and I promise the bravest thing you can do is to grow. Grab ahold of yourself before she slips through your fingers, and soon enough, you’ll find that you are someone you never want to let go of. 

My trauma has been mistaken as drama for as long as I can remember, maybe punishment for being born a girl or maybe adults easing their guilty conscience of never stepping in to help a neglected child. A lifetime of minimizing, yet I still write. I still feel. I still storytell and ask the devil for new deals. What I pushed away for so long is the most prized bit of sorcery about me. Of course I’m dramatic–I’m a poet. What else would I be?

I keep journals noting every intricacy of my being, but it’s no use sharing them with men who don’t know how to read. And even if they did, what they would find would leave them displeased. I’ve solved many puzzles in my life, but I’m not sure how to be a person someone wants to keep. 

I wonder if I’m as forgettable as your silence is making me feel. There’s remnants of me everywhere— I was half moved into your place when you decided you needed space. Is it easy for you to avoid the pieces of me around your house? My clothes are still mixed into your laundry and my toothbrush on your bathroom sink. How is it that easy for you to ignore all the fragments on me? I hope my pillow is still a soft place for you to land now that you’ve decided that’s something I can’t be. I hope your kitchen sink got fixed and my cast iron skillet makes cooking easy. I hope you still find my hair in your bedroom when you’re trying to sleep. And I hope when you close your eyes you’re stuck with dreams of me going down on you on repeat. Are your lips still sticky from the lip-gloss kiss I planted on your mouth that day we went out for your birthday and left dinner laughing too loudly? That day I left a mark on you proudly. We collapsed onto your couch when we got home and shared spearmint candies in your living room. I’m willing to bet there’s still plastic wrappers from them littered under your furniture. That night my clothes melted off and you told me you fit perfectly inside me—who the fuck says that when they’re planning on leaving? There’s ash in your hall closet from bowls we’d smoke in your back yard. How do these memories not make the distance too hard? At any moment, you could call a truce and admit you took this too far. My shampoo in in your shower and my snacks in your cupboard—do these reminders of me make you feel smothered? There’s so much left to rediscover and I think they were onto something when they said absence makes the heart grow fonder. 

I had never experienced “deer in the headlights” moment until he showed up unexpectedly wearing a hunter orange hoodie. I froze in my tracks, waiting for him to load the gun. His words hit me like lead and I wanted nothing more than to disappear. But I was trapped and scared and all I could do was laugh because if I didn’t laugh, I would cry. I would scream. I would tell him all the things he did, how he damaged me, how I was a deer in the headlights when we met and he hit me like a fucking car and ruined me. I want nothing more than to feel whole again. And seeing him shattered me all over again— like the parts of me I had tried to put together were suddenly lying on the ground again. But I don’t have the strength to pick them up again. You are a poison I want to drink even though I know you are toxic to me. You have hurt me in way I cannot put into words and for some reason, I still want to feel your embrace. I’m addicted to your presence even though you cause me nothing but pain. I was never insane except when I was around you— this extraordinary, unexplainable, painful type of joy that only you could cause me. I need to erase you from every space in my world and detox myself of the drug that is you. If I am a deer in your headlights, please don’t make my death a pit stop on your fucked up journey of finding closure. Just leave me here on the side of the road and let me pretend this is over.