Ghosted

1. Our first date was at a coffee shop’s jazz night followed by drinks

You called me an expensive drunk as we laughed ourselves past 1am

2. You would take me out just to spend an hour with me

Telling me any time spent with me was a good time

3. You made me feel special for the first time in months

4. Days would go by without even a text

Weeks gone by without seeing you

5. One day you were gone with the wind

Blaming myself for not being enough for you

Wondering where I went wrong

Maybe it was when I fell for your smile

Or loving you despite the walls I knew would always be there

Fragmented Lovers

One month I am getting too drunk with a man 5 years my senior

Trying to forget the pain that came before

The next a man who thought he would spend his life with me

Drowning me in his brokenness

Taking until there was nothing left for me to give

Another I reached the clouds with

I do not remember his name

Only the way the weed drowned my loneliness

One night with a man I never intended to see again

Two months with a man I tried to make love me

I tore myself to pieces for him

Making myself bite sized and palatable for him

None compared to the love I had for you

All that love turned to grief when you left

I thought I would spend my life with you and it was gone in a snap of the fingers

Now I am drowning waiting for a love like that again

To the Friend Living With My Abuser

You knew both before and after

He will never change but nor will you

I no longer recognize the woman I once confided in

He crushed me into dust

No longer the same reflection looking back in the mirror

Reducing me to ash with the firestorm of his own trauma

Do not pity me

But you say to let you know if you are friends with one’s abuser

What do I do when one is inseparable from him

Abusers are nice to those they aren’t abusing

And he seems “nice enough” to never have weaponized his words

Treading lightly in case his tongue was no longer enough to tear town the abandoned building I became

You do not know fear when looking into his eyes

I tried giving myself in phases as the moon does

He took it all leaving me in my own darkness

He took and took and took until there was nothing left for me to give

I was suppose to heal him while healing from him

Here I am still unlearning a love that burned going down

Still looking for my reflection

Hoping you will hear the screams to run as fast as you can

Knowing neither of you will change for one tiny voice pleading

Sobering Up

Cheap vodka no longer burns my throat

Boxed wine no longer tastes so bad compared to the good stuff

Wiping away the lies I tell myself sober

I do not have a problem but a solution to the nights remembering

Forgetting the way you made the cold in my bones grow into spring

I could not tell you who else kissed my neck after you left the flowers to wilt with autumn

Who tried loving me well enough to replace you

Tequila on a budget wiped my memory clean

I told myself I did not have a problem until six months later realizing the warmth I felt was the whiskey

Not you returning to my bed, softly snoring with the morning light illuminating my love for you

Sobering up from your love and the whiskey is something I am learning to be fine with

I am still trying to forget how your laughter filled me

Blooming

We fell with the autumn leaves that September

Your love made me bloom into who I thought I was with that spring

Your eyes brighter than a summer’s day

A deeper blue than any I had ever seen

You left in the depths of winter the following year

Leaving your side of the bed cold

My body remembering the way the legs of a sprinter intertwined with mine as we slept

Months later I still found myself leaving room for you, just in case you decided to come back

Forgetting I was whole before you

But watching you leave without uttering a goodbye shattered me

I am now forgetting your laughter, the way your eyes lit up when I entered a room

I no longer recognize the man I thought I would marry

You are no longer the man I once would have died for

I find comfort in that these days your heart would no longer recognize me either

I am growing back into myself, with the spring and a strength I forgot I had

Blooming into what I once thought impossible

You were not the world as I thought it was, I am

I will cherish our adventure until the end of time

But now I am making better memories without you

Thank you for holding my heart for a while

As I gently held yours

Dear Little Sister,

Your memories of the last decade saw my laughter further morph into a wheeze

Understand I am sick

The anxiety only responds to setting my insides on fire

Just as I had taught it

And aren’t I the best teacher?

Drinking myself into convincing myself I do not exist

Further becoming the darkness I promised I would not become

Baby I failed

We know how this cycle ends all too well

My hands no longer belong to me but to the plague convincing me to leave this life behind

I convinced myself I dissapeared for far too long to return to who I was

I do not know how to return to you

Which may be my best lesson to you yet

Aren’t I the best teacher?

Eons of Pain

If pain were to be measured in lifetimes

I have seen the revolutions you read in history books

I know people eons old

Corroding themselves into the very dust they were born from

As they watched the stars form and collapse into themselves, avidly taking notes

Wise beyond this world

But this world won’t leave them alone

Stuck as ghosts, shells of their former selves

Maybes and what-ifs disturbing their sleep

Not enough scars or wrinkles showing the stories of their lives

No one wants to sit and listen to the advice of this weathered people

Plucked from worlds away to whisper stories of home into the wind

We all get labeled the same – crazy, lunatics, people who shouldn’t be on the outside

Yet we all have incredible stories to tell

So please, listen to those who have watched their world crumble and rose again

Before we are but whispers in the wind, returning home

 

Guilt of One Left Behind

There exists a place where she lives and I don’t

Where she survived and I succumbed

Let the illness float me downstream to a better existence

Where I did not have to blame myself for surviving this long

For what if she could have given more than I can?

I have a laundry list of people who should have survived but did not

Her name still burns in the past tense

My cousin, you watched me grow up

We both suffered one in the same

Addicts in our own rights, ill in an organ society still thinks shouldn’t get sick

I tried to join you a year and a half later

I bear a weight too heavy for me to carry, for I carry your memory and what you could have become

I am still trying to find peace

But I was sent spiraling in mourning, wishing it was anyone but you

I know the drugs feel too good and that the emotions are a hell that is a solitary experience with just your name on the door

Surviving is something I struggle with these days

On the darkest ones I always looked to you

But now they are darker

Maybe I will feel you on my shoulder soon telling me to keep on going for you

Damage Done

They say untreated mental illness causes damage to the brain

Which means 9 years has done a toll on me

Illness surfaced first at 12 when I stopped eating

Worsening in the second year of abuse at 13 – I am sure her fists every day left a mark but time blocked that year out

Maybe flight or fight kicked in and I am running from the memories of the beginnings

Addiction took hold that same year in the form of the blood down the drain

Learning that it numbed the chaos no one else could see

Mother thought I was taking after my cousin in the form of track marks at only 13

Yet my screams fell on deaf ears until the day I was about to go home and execute myself in the last cry for help

Trying to return to the earth my family came from

Despite never seeing the homeland forests we are named after

Lungs began to blacken weeks before the hospital stay

Hallucinations plaguing in the year after

Medication is a tricky thing

And 7 is not my lucky number for 7 years later I went through with an attempt

Psychosis kicking in before I could stop it

I do not remember that night, mind automatically erasing traumatic events

And I had endured 4 years of it at this point

Loving a man whose concept of love was hurting someone else adding 2 years

Yet I have learned “endure” is carved in my bones

Passed on from my father and his siblings, his parents

From extreme poverty to a war they did not want to fight to the repercussions of service to addiction

All surviving, enduring

I am learning to mourn the years I lost

Learning from my father, I am being taught by the best qualified teacher

I am enduring the pain

Despite the decade of damage

Broken Lover

My heart stayed quiet when I spotted you in the distance

The heartbreak is distant now

Forgetting the symphony of your laughter

Or the way you held me like all was well in the world

Nothing more could hurt me in your arms

I wonder if you have forgotten how my smile formed

Or my eyes lighting up when I saw you

But I saw your passion snapping when you left

While I receded into darkness unfamiliar to you

You saw the lights go out in my eyes

Not caring to watch the destruction of me afterwards

You would not listen to the whispering of the men or the alcohol consumed to forget you

Spending more nights drunk than sober

But I am making it

The moon watching my rebirth while you sleep soundly

I hope it was all worth it

I hope you can forgive yourself for not stopping my destruction

For I am someone you no longer recognize as the one you loved

I saw you today and for once, I hoped your heart was happy without me