#karyspk

Imagine a fire that you cannot help but swallow. It burns you from the inside out. It will kill you quickly but make you believe it has been a lifetime. This is how I feel for you.

When does it stop hurting? When does love start filling in the cracks? Because I have put a hand against my chest to feel my heart and nobody can tell me this is not where the pain begins.

I wonder if there will come a day when I do not measure my worth by the depth of the indents your fingertips have left on my hips. I dream of the moment I realize that although men look at me the same way they see the deli aisle at the supermarket, I am not a package to be held and ripped apart at your convenience. I fantasize about the feeling of freedom I will one day own as I step out of the shower and stare myself in the mirror and scream that my skin is no longer a prison that I must try to escape from. On my worst days, you are underneath each layer of dirt that I can never scrub hard enough away. You are the blood that runs down the drains as I tell myself that this is what being clean means. It is only when all my cells have been stripped from my aching core that I can say nobody has seen me naked. I regret the men that I have allowed to undress me without first telling them the way Christmas day haunts me the way children see monsters lurking in the corners of their darkened bedrooms. I regret the men that I have allowed to run their nails down my spine without first letting them understand that I have killed myself in my mind time and time again. I regret the men that I have imagined myself loving without ever doing so. I wonder if there will come a day when I do not see myself as this pile of bones stacked on top of mistakes - the skeleton in the closets of all of the men who have never stayed around long enough to know that the memory of me will be the hardest part of getting out of bed every day.

I miss who I was before I met you. Every time I napped in your arms I left a part of my heart next to your lips on the pillow. Every time I woke up next to you I gave a part of my soul to the sunshine across your cheeks. Trying to remember who I was before you ever came into my life is trying to crawl into the skin of a stranger on the street, is trying to break into a home that is not my own to steal their belongings, is trying to become best friends with a person I have long since stopped talking to. I miss the person I was before I ever held your hands against my throat. I miss the person I was before I ever let your pulse beat against the scars on my body. I miss the person who never met you - because they would never have to miss you like I do.

More poetry is coming! I finish exams on Tuesday so there will be a flood!