*****WARNING: ALL OF THE TRIGGER WARNINGS. ALL OF THEM.*****
****I’M NOT BEING FACETIOUS. I JUST WANT YOU TO BE SAFE.****
Perfect by Ellen Hopkins
and half-poetry slipping
through my mind
trigger words
and things I thought
I left behind,
can never leave behind.
Scars remain regardless
of the years. The stitching
shows through.
The glass you pieced together
inside your psyche
still sees you,
a reflection of the past.
Borrowing someone else’s
body dysmorphia,
flirting with anorexia,
slipping in and out
of a dissociated state
we don’t have words for.
It’s not safe to have words for.
I wonder sometimes
what it is like
to be normal,
but then I remember:
there’s no such thing.
Simply chemicals and hormones,
and the pain that makes us sing
out “alleluias” to the gods
and monsters of our society
that wreck us daily
with messages overt, covert,
excessively, obsessively,
telling us to be or not to be
however they define it.
I have fought those messages,
punched the mirrors,
broken mind, cracked
to pieces I can never
quite put back together
a nervous system wrecked
by general anxiety.
Nothing specific here.
Too many things to fear.
Too many things to stress
my adrenal glands to their limit
and beyond.
A delicate, concrete, mess.
I wonder, sometimes, if you can see it.
I am moss and flowers strewn
at a grave site.
Brittle bones splitting
down the middle of a highway,
standing, waiting for a car
to hit me and be done with it.
Passively suicidal.
I am a cityscape, noise and dirt
coughing, bitter, cynical
as cyanide,
cold to the touch, “monstrous”
some say. People as experiments
to be used as needed,
like oxygen, unfortunate dependency.
I am a desiccated tower,
a hermit and a fool,
sacrificing self, time, identity,
to those who need it,
regardless
of the damage done,
can not ever be undone,
no matter how hard they try,
I will not be undone,
and oh, how They do try
to break us down to pieces,
scatter us like glitter
and dried blood,
a quiet collection of aches.
I would bleed out my lungs,
gasp out my tongue,
burn my body to the ground
if I thought for one second
it could save You.
There are always so many,
that need saving.
Too many who slice up skin,
place hot lighters to flesh,
stick fingers down
throats empty from binge-
vomiting up acid that wraps
itself around teeth
that taste too many calories.
Too much abuse and misuse
of language, hands, and words
that don’t leave scars
that can be traced back
or shown as evidence.
Invisible crimes
that bury us.
I want to save the world,
cuddle you up in my arms,
sing you lullabies,
but goddammit
I can barely save myself,
so you have to fight, darlings.
Set this world on fire.
Let it burn to the ground.
We’ll rebuild it.
Plant seeds dark and gorgeous,
green buds growing from the ash.
naomiruthwrites 