Here again—
County runner up, showdown in the bedroom
Two hands grazing the trigger.
Who will get the last laugh?
And, it's almost never me.
Stinking of gunsmoke and chemistry.
I run before he gets the chance to hear my heartbeat.
Out the door and forget the keys.
Check the locks: one, two, and three.
It's always a figment of my imagination;
The danger, the fear, the words:
"I have to get the fuck out of here."
I am a puppet show of my past. A marionette of memory;
strings tangled in old memories.
strung out and moving mechanically. pull a little harder for me?
Eventually at the end of the spool,
all wrung out and at a loss of time.
Twenty-two, a sum of nothing.
When they ask for my greatest achievement, I will have to lie.
No one wants the truth—
that I stayed when I wanted to go,
that I lived when I begged not to.
That i am sober, but I do not feel changed.
Statistically I should be dead by now. I should also be happier.
Surviving is a strange, slowly killing thing;
Much like a tumor or disease.
They all stare and fold their hands— say, "Well, what's next?"
I laugh like the question is small, like I haven't already mapped out every escape. I let them feed me scripted hope, hoping it keeps me whole. Therapy rooms with plastic plants and patient eyes, but no one ever speaks the right language. No one ever reads between the lines.
I am still learning the weight of my own, and the way yours ties under my tongue. It's a familiar game. Maybe, I will make a home in the aftermath. Maybe, I will learn to love the sound of footsteps that do not flee; That do not scurry towards me.
And if I am lucky,
one day I will not fear the stillness of my own breathing.
I will not fear loving someone with all of me.
