My refuge

When you want to know my true thoughts you tell me to envision a pitch black room

Well I’m not in Kansas anymore Toto

I am here

Sitting in a bathroom

This pattern

This bathroom

Here I found refuge after a rape

Here

Is my darkest escape

Here

I imagine

Hanging myself from the shower rod

Here

I turn imaginations into experimentations

But I can’t sneak another belt into the bathroom without you getting suspicious

Like you care

So here

I am

Caressing curtains

Mimicking a noose

Until my muscles grow tired then I let it loose

This shower curtain has hugged me tighter

Than my mother ever has

And you chalk my emotions up to “for myself I’m feeling sad,”

If you only knew

This bathroom conjures

A refuge

From rape

After rape

After fucking rape

And you wonder why I get so sad in the space that I escape

But I’m a burden

Every fucking stab in my back I deserve it

Every pain that’s ingrained was always worth it

Every painful purpose I was born to serve it

J

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Alliteration

You…

Are desensitized to my cries

Like a sociopath

You…

Are detached

From the feeling behind the tears

You…

Play, like a symphony,

Your,

Violin-shrill voice, the cacophony

 Of my fears

You…

Detach

To how I react

Not once do

You,

Consider

The reason for me being blue

If I…

Am the victim

Then you…

Are the symptom

That helped lead the situation eschew

 

You say I am playing the victim

When the actors of this situation

Have left me brittle and bruised

So my apologies

If I have been literally, emotionally beaten down

Lord forbid I have the nerve to show it too

 

I do not cry for the fun of it

I cry because I am fragile

And you are heavy handed

So I know when you are about to break me

With every tear

I am exiled

I’m beginning to think you truly hate me

 

It’s unbelievable

Even deceivable

Your mechanical mechanisms for barring out emotion

When we are at our worst, we tend to show our truest devotion

You leave via vehicle far too big for the road you choose to travel down

Your voice the vessel for words much too hard for me to wrestle without feeling like eventually I’ll drown

Spring Equinox

Spring has come

Yet the only thing

It seems

Has sprung forward

Are my loved ones

Mental illness symptoms

The love of my life

Overwhelmed with depression

Sadness

That seems to come in patterns

I want to help them

My mom

Pissing me off

Yet what I fail to notice is that she’s about to have a manic episode

My grandma

Stricken with anxiety

Now that my mom has stolen her van

And she has no clue where she’ll go

I

Up at three a.m.

Taking it all in

Depression

Anxiety

Wondering why people keep trying me

I don’t know

The Green Light at the End of the Deck

When I see you I see us

I see you so lost in love with me and I with you

That we cannot see anyone else

I see us picking up where we left off before things turned horrid

Back on Repecho

I see us making money

Traveling

Living

Loving

Are these things we can look forward to, or are they already behind us?

Triangulated

They triangulated third parties to hold their love hostage

Not seeing the damage that’s already been done

Three people

Yesterday I hung out with people with Muslim roots

I thought of you

People whose parents come from three different countries in the middle east

Children who existed on various spectrums of our rainbow

I was intrigued

I wiggled my way in

Into their conversation

By common words I had learned —on my own and from you

Kaifa hal?

I inquired.

Tamam

One responded.

 

I…met a guy who told me he substitutes cocaine for psychotropic medications when he runs out

Until his next refill

Because something has to keep his chemical levels from dipping

He needed an “upper”

 

I met a woman

Who told me of the pressures her parents put her under

How she rebelled

How she met the love of her life, not taking them seriously

Their first interaction a threesome

Now they’re getting married

 

How she lost all of her friends due to that proposal

Because they so badly wanted to be the first.

 

We connected.

I felt vibes of one attempting to come onto me.

Beat them at their game and slipped into the night.

 

On my ride home I pondered.

 

Not looking, she found what I want

I reflected back on others’ experiences that let them to this type of commitment

Cheating, open relationships, threesomes.

I feel like I exist on some other plane

Are these things the things one must do to secure a future with you?

I am saddened because no matter how hard I work

I end up empty handed

And this type of work that’s left, the work to which I refer, are just not made for my hands to attend to.

 

Spilling

I’ve slit my metaphorical wrists

With the sharp shards of our broken love

And words are pouring out of me

Words, thoughts, I’ve kept in

Feelings that have been coursing through my blood stream for so long

Why does pain have to be the blessing that a writer wishes for

To create?