do you remember those nights when
fear fell asleep on my cheek,
stretched gray into my pores,
made me itch itch itch
with glass house air--
warm with living breathing weeds
that dug into the moist soil of my heart?
and do you remember when
i told myself he could not love me
because there was too much of his soul
he never gave, all neat and packaged
up like christmas still. and dammit if
mine wasn't unwrapped, the paper
thrown half-way cross the room now,
am i right?
there was fear there too--
rejection and sorrow wrapped cords
of raw liver around my feet, kept
watch of my naked heart when it
beat too hard because it wasn't sure
they heard it and to be left in a
cardboard box by the cracked asphalt might
have just broken the old thing.
the waking was the worst: that was
the time when it all came rolling into
my stomach like a ball of yarn--
knotted tangled scratchy mess
lumped into me, spilled out of my
mouth. made it hard to think, hard to even
get up, get going, get doing.
those were the days i understood
the darkness some people carry
the best, for it back-packed between
my shoulder blades. i set it down somewhere
(was it thursday?), yet it finds
me at times still, settles coldly
into my molars. some days i leave it there--
it keeps me human.
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