(tw: abuse, depression, suicide attempt)

recently it's like i'm no longer part of my body

as if my soul and i disconnected and everything is so foggy

when i look in the mirror i see black and white glitches

glazed eyes starin' down to a heart made of stitches

my mama says i'm too young to be this depressed

but why do i feel 10 lifetimes crushing my empty chest?

father likes to smash beer bottles against my bones

he kicks me in the stomach and his words hurt like stones

when he's not drunk he likes to tell me that i must be a man

i must never be emotional and pretend i give no damns

but the problem, the problem is i care too much

i don't know why but i get scared too much

i want to be the person that he wants me to be

but there's only darkness inside of me

and i can't hear my heart anymore, i can no longer see

the figments of my past self, shrouded in mystery

🌙

when my parents fought

i'd stare at the old piano book

and i'd

look through the notes

and they'd rearrange into a

garden of unknown languages and

symbols and i'd grow

forget-me-nots from the curves

in the open notes and

swipe cerulean over the

sticcados and accents,

breathing the last part of

me that was alive into the

lines of music while i stopped

living and only existed

🌙

last night i had a lucid dream

where my fingers

b l u r r r r r rrrr re d and

t w s e

i t d

and my hair

gl-l-l-l-lllllitched

B1U3&GR33N

with my bruised fingertips

i created another me

who stared with eyes so dark

i wondered how he could see

i asked him,

"what do you fear?"

and he created a mirror

IN IT I SAW A BEAST OF GLOOM

LOCKED INSIDE A WINDOWLESS ROOM

then the

s h a d o w s

in his eyes

began to rise

toward me and

i

tried

to

scream

but

my

head

was

under

water

&

i'm

f

a

l

l

i

n

g

i'm so fucking afraid of falling

🌙

the notes spill down the end

of the music bars into a

waterfall of everlasting

torture and nightmares

running down the edge of the

paper and into the cracks of my

palms, collecting scars

the size of atoms and as

large as agony

🌙

i don't remember how it happened, i think it hurt so much that my brain deleted the memory from my mind

i just remember blurry shapes, ripped petals of poetry snowing on my bedroom floor. i remember my father shouting at me and torn pieces of words and syllables slipping through his fingers,

i remember hurting.

i remember hurting and i don't know how but there are fresh bruises on my face. i forgot how they go there. my father's angry and it was probably him but i don't remember.

i remember hearing my heart being torn out from my chest, a heart made of bruises but still young, still tender. i remember feeling pain bigger than my body, i remember my heart trying to break but it's already broken so much it can't break anymore,

i remember walking untl i forgot why and somehow i ended up on the edge of the cliff with the sunset bleeding from the sun's eyes, like blood and i remember staring at the rocks and waves below and imagining my bare ribs buried in the ocean

i remember staring at my red shoes

i remember being terrified of falling and how much i wanted to die just then but i just couldn't do it, i remember thinking, "somewhere, someone's brave enough to jump in. and maybe the ocean saved her but all she wanted to was to die. she wasn't afraid of dying, she was afraid of living, but i- i'm afraid of both."

i don't remember anything else. i just know that i'm not brave enough to live or die.

🌙

and when my garden dies, i

piece together the notes and

scrawled over the page

and press my fingers into the

piano, just to feel something