A series of poems by Beccah

Tramatize

The first time I notice the hollowness of my chest, I'm in fifth grade.
I'm sitting in class without him for the first time.
I hear the beating of my heart in my ears so loud that I have been unable to hear anything since.
The hollow auditorium of my chest sending vibrations down my spine, unopposed by the echoes of my heartbeat.
I feel the entirety of my small body shivering in the absence of heat.
My small, 10-year-old, hands reaching for only the things they cannot have.

The day my best friend Stephen was murdered, the caller told my mother in whispered grief. When she hung up the phone, she set it down quietly on the table and glanced at me with a hand placed carefully on her chest,
I know she felt hollow too because I could see it swimming in the pupils of her eyes.
She did not have the willpower to form her lips around such a toxic sentence,
she did not tell me for another two days.
When she did, I felt my body fold, but I did not feel myself hit the floor.
She told me they had not found the body.
I imagined Stephen standing beside the skin that once encompassed him, screaming at it to accept him back inside.
I did not leave my twin sized bed for six days.

The first time I dream about Stephen, I imagine us playing pirates in the yard,
he was smiling at me through gapped teeth.
My mother held me when I woke up with an ocean of tears around my body.
She told me the wind held a thousand years worth of stories and Stephen was one of them,
that I would find him whisking through the tree branches in the Spring.
I have yet to find Stephen, but the wind always seems to find me.

The second time I am empty, I am a junior in high school.
My body nothing but a silhouette placed beside broad shoulders.
I feel his hands on my waist, holding my bare feet to the wet cement somewhere between dawn and dusk
I feel the electricity in my veins collide with the water and burn my entire being to the floor.
He would not let me hit the floor.
I feel myself pushed against brick,
smelling the primal desire like a dull musk strong enough to mask my screams.

I feel my vacant being hit the alleyway trash can on its way to the ground.
I feel my body earthquake with my first panic attack.
I remember telling myself that I am a timelord, keeping moments like the only religion I'll ever know.
To keep this moment, to never forget the echo in my ears, to always experience it like a broken record.
I experience every jerk of my body as I sit gasping out shallow breaths,
I woke up two hours later in a curled position against an alley wall.
My body was folded into a question mark around what was left of his branding touch,
I feel it like secondhand pain.
I feel myself on the outside of my body, watching myself pull her figure off the ground and stumble down the empty sidewalk.

The first time I dream of him,
I am feeling his touch running down my chest,
A sweeping line from my neck to my stomach with rough fingers and firelike palms.
My mother does not know that I wish she would have been there to hold me.

I've always loved metaphors,
The way they are free in their meanings.
I, however, am not a metaphor.

I am more like a simile,
Always comparing myself to things that are larger than me, like stacks of books.
I imagine their authors to be so full of words,
And then I remind myself that my words have been lost in the empty locked room inside my head. 
I am so much less than the things inside of myself.

The wind has not shown me Stephen, but it has picked up my hollow figure up off the floor more times than I can count.
I tell myself that if I do not hear one thousand years worth of memories when the breeze hits my hair, then I am not listening hard enough.
I have played things over so many times in my head that I do not remember what the blood in my mouth had tasted like.
I have not forgotten to remind myself that I do not know what it had tasted like.

The next time, I'll feel empty the way a canvas is blank,
Like I could hold all the colors of the galaxy inside myself until they burst from my veins and drip to the floor.
I imagine myself fighting wars on the battlefield of my fingertips,
Open battles conducted like dinner plates set at the table of my tongue,
My lips setting fire to the barracks just to watch grown men cry.
I smell the whiskey-stained breath of my recovering soldiers who had been fighting battles behind my breastplate for too long.
Next time, I'll be ready to wage war in the excruciating levels of my rib cage.

I'll command symphonies to ring through the hollow auditorium of my chest,
I'll remind myself that I have only ever known parts of myself,
That I can be so much more than the things inside of myself.
I'll repeat this so much that it will lose its meaning,
But I will find meaning again and again,
Until I forgive myself for the things I did not become.