They birthed us into metal,
not light or even air,
but heat lamps and screaming steel,
the floor already coated
in yesterday’s version of ourselves.

We were slick and blinking,
wet with newness,
and still they stamped us:
Product of tradition. Best before death.

Hands in latex gloves
cooed lullabies
while scraping placenta from the drain.

They taught us to crawl
between cleavers,
to smile when we were handled,
to hold still when the slicing came
because it’s not personal,
because they love us,
because their hands hurt too.

They shoved their trauma down our throats
before we grew teeth.
Force-fed us their coping mechanisms
like communion
bite-sized bitterness
they called resilience.
Swallow it.
Say thank you.

We didn’t know any better.
Meat doesn’t ask why.
Meat just learns to stay warm
and pretend the hook isn’t coming.

They called the bleeding becoming.
Called the bruises bad days.
and the conveyor destiny.

We rotted in place,
but they sprayed us down,
made us presentable;
vacuum-sealed smiles,
shrink-wrapped hope.

The air always smelled like bleach and denial.

Some of us tried to scream
but by then our mouths were already full
stuffed with apologies,
with other people’s f*cking expectations,
with the same dull knives they said
they “survived” with.

And when we flinched,
they told us we were lucky.
Lucky we weren’t born into fire.
Lucky they only carved out
what they couldn’t understand in themselves.

Love, they said,
was just the sound of the band saw
getting closer.
No more, no less.

And still -
We line up.
We inherit the gloves.
We raise our children
beneath the same heat lamps,
and pretend
it’s destiny.

We used to float,
Raising our glasses.
The great unknown before us,
Surely great.

Life in its many colours
Filled my senses, and friends were treasures.
Time an illusion, and crying… just to cry.

With your loss,
My shadow grew.
Every shade of paint against the sunlit skies
Greyed, faded—
Dead trees forming a rigid silhouette.

For one to love life so,
Lighter than the morning breeze,
Understanding beyond understanding—

On your knees you pulled the moon near,
You kissed the sun
And found love wherever you went.

As I drag my shackles day after day,
As the moon moves nearer to me,
I cannot see it.
I do not feel the warmth of the sun.
Nor do I embrace love wherever I go.

For it was ordained then
That I would survive you—
Though the weight had not been foretold.

The shadow puts its hand on my shoulder,
A solemn kindness in its grip.
It is time to go,
To endure… again.

The girl was only eleven,
when she first thought

                            "What if I went?"

When even escaping
to magic-filled hardcovers
could not ease her descent

School bullies were not all
that pulled her
towards the yawning void,
on eggshells she walked
around him,

being careful not to flip
his switch
He'll twitch -
see red
It filled her with dread
Better to stay tight lipped -

                Better to be

                                     His pet

Abuse, avoid, forgive, abuse, avoid, forgive
It’s never ending a cycle of stupidity I allow to continue
We talk, we have fun, but I must follow the script

A cycle of stupidity I can’t break free of
Oh, how family can cause so much pain
A crave for love, and a crave to love
And all they crave is to be on top

But it’s not my fault you’re not the favorite
It’s not my fault you’re lazy and dumb
But it is my fault I stay
Stay in this box, broken and withered,

I stay with hopes you’ll change
But it’s been 15 years
And your grip has gotten stronger
And your heart has gotten colder
As my heart falls further

But I crave for love and protection
I crave for normalcy, and to be able to confide in you
But you’ve left me to fall apart like a box in the rain

I see others and how they live
Their hearts full
Not like mine
Not like yours

Not like your empty, broken heart
That knows nothing other than breaking mine
Not like my broken heart
That knows nothing but to try and fix the pieces.

Oh, it’s truly a cycle of stupidity, and I want to break free
But I live in a world of abuse, avoid, forgive

It waits until I’m almost steady.
Not at rock bottom ~
that’s too predictable.
It prefers the moment I reach for light
with both hands.

That’s when it speaks.

“Cute,”
it coos,
“You really thought clarity made you real.”

It doesn’t shout.
It purrs,
low and syrupy,
like a lullaby laced with glass.

It knows every version of me;
the ones I buried to be digestible.
It built this mind like a haunted house
and hands me the key every time I dare to leave.

“You always did mistake coherence for truth,”
it says,
dragging its nails along the walls of my thoughts.
“So good at talking. So bad at existing.”
I flinch.

It recites memories I forgot to be ashamed of.
Plays tapes I didn’t know I recorded.
Slows down the faces, the pauses,
the ones who humored me and didn’t mean it.

“Look at them smile. Look at you, lapping it up.”

It paces.
It prowls.
It pulls up a chair when I sit with someone and dare to feel seen.
Leans in and whispers,
“They’re just being kind. You’re not that hard to pity.”
It keeps me tense.

It’s not a villain.
It’s a roommate.
It knows my schedule, my preferences, my tells.
It trims my self-trust like dead ends from hair.
Efficient.
Unemotional.
Necessary.

And when I resist ~
when I say No, I felt that, I meant that,
it doesn’t argue.

It just tilts its head and says,
“You really do crave applause for surviving, don’t you?”

Then it goes quiet,
knowing I’ll crawl back
the second I start to question
what’s mine
and what’s performance.

Because between the two of us,
only one of us ever sounds like she knows what she’s talking about.

There’s a man
who speaks for me
when my throat burns raw
from holding too much back.

British.
Refined.
A little too sure of himself -
but isn’t that the point?

He showed up in the static,
when my own voice
started splintering
under the weight of smiling.
Back when masking
meant survival,
and sounding different
was the only kind of safe I knew.

He’s not always kind,
but he’s always ready.
Crisp consonants.
Neatly folded sentences.
No stammer, no stray emotion.
Just enough distance
to keep breathing.

He isn’t me.
But I let him live
in the hollow between words,
in the pause where fear used to be.
Some days, I speak
and only realize later -
it was him, not me.

He doesn’t ask questions.
He answers them.

I wonder sometimes
what he’s protecting.
Or hiding.
Or holding up like armor
against the softness of me.

Colonizer?
Comfort?
Cohabitator?

He was born
in the croak of survival.
And now,
even when I’m safe,
he stays.

I would never send him away.
He kept me whole
when I didn’t know I was breaking.
If I carry him still,
it’s because
he carried me first.

I didn’t plan to make it this far.
the road was long, and I was tired.
Life never promised me softness,
but then there was you ~
folding sunlight into my hours
like it had always belonged there.

You, who can fit
a decade of joy into a single day,
whose laugh pulls the dust from old corners
and leaves something living in its place.
Your eyes ~
they undress more than skin.
They peel back the years I wore like armor,
and somehow,
I do not mind being seen.

You say you don’t like your greys.
But I ~
I never thought I’d wear time like this,
like a shared jacket
slung across the backs of two souls
sitting on a porch too small for regret.
Each silver strand a mile we’ve wandered,
each wrinkle a map I get to trace
with grateful hands.

If this is what age can look like;
soft, surprising,
filled with the kind of joy
that hums low in the bones,
then let time come.
Let it etch you deeper into me.
Let it bring more of your quiet magic,
the kind that rewrites endings
before they’re written.

Whatever waits for us next,
I will greet it smiling.
Because somehow,
you made forever feel
less like a promise,
and more like a present.

I keep throwing up memories
no one asked me to keep -
bruises shaped like questions,
the sound of my mother’s scream
lodged behind my ribs.

No one tells you grief can rot
when you don’t spit it out.
That love, untouched,
ferments into something sour.
I carry it all in my throat ~
half apology, half war cry.

You say,
“I want more of you.”
And my body says,
“Are you sure?”
Because more of me
means bloodstains on carpet,
means fists instead of lullabies,
means learning how to disappear
before I ever learned to speak.

I was fed fear in childhood portions,
taught to flinch before I felt.
I watched my mother
burn down her mind,
and still tried to build homes
in her ashes.
I held her wrist
when she begged me not to.
Took the pills. Took the gun.
Took the fall.

I was not built for softness
but I do crave it.
Every tender thing feels foreign,
like wearing someone else’s skin.
But you touch me
like I’m not ruined.
And that’s the part
that makes me sick.

Because what if you mean it?

What if love doesn’t have to be
a wound I pick at just to feel alive?
What if you stay?
And worse - what if you don’t?

This is my mourning sickness:
grieving safety I never had,
while choking on the possibility
that I could finally
be held
without having to shatter first.