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

and my question for you tonight
what are you most scared of
in the pale moonlight
when you're by yourself
and you imagine a life where there isn’t any fear
what do you wish you wouldn’t have to bear?

i’ll start, i guess—
i’m scared of loud noises
people screaming
put me in direct contact
and i’ll lose all my feelings

i’m scared of broken ceramics
violence, hitting, cursing, breaking
i remember tea stains on the walls
pieces of a once whole, beautiful cup
strewn about, broken everywhere

i’m scared of the heights
only on days when i feel just too light
that i might just let go
what if i fall and what if there’s nothing that’ll hold me back
or a ledge to hold on

i’m scared of the compact
too many monsters all at once
perhaps i’ll crack
a pressure, eyes upon me
i could disguise, pretend
but i hate all that i see

i’m scared of losing all this kind
of losing who i am
and this battle in my mind
going cross-eyed even as i write
i’m scared of failing, falling,
not being able to swim back up
simply drowning

i’m scared of loving too much
perhaps enough and never being loved back
and it could be a lie or an irony
but i’m scared of nursing a broken heart
or breaking one myself
for i wouldn’t want it
wouldn’t want to see the mess
but it happens, happens way too much
and i have to play pretend

i’m scared of speaking
of what if you see the hidden meanings
of what if you just don’t— and ignore me
what if i speak, and there’s nobody to listen
and even if they do listen, what if i burden

i’m scared of being lost
in the depths, in the lows,
not being able to express does that to you the most
and i fear losing
losing all that i’ve built
every step i’ve taken
every memory i’m sewn in
all the moments out of time i’ve milked
to the very last drop
feelings i’ve penned down, every last thought

i’m scared of— not being enough
perhaps i am not
but even so— i deserve to exist
exist without a doubt or second thoughts
and i shall revoke anyone’s rights
don’t make me feel like it might
be better if i ceased to exist
i fear it and i fear what if a day comes
when i can’t write, listen, see or speak

and what if i lose
lose you, and what if i get punished
for things i haven’t even done but simply being blamed for
and what if you see me with the eyes that carry despise
hatred perhaps, i fear what if a day comes
and i just don’t see you anywhere or here, in fact

i’m scared of a lot more
of being left behind
overlooked, perhaps thrown to the side
never healing from things i can’t even speak of
and perhaps staying the same
missing out, accidentally meeting upon accidents
that could become part of the worst nightmares or
failing, falling on dreams and been a betrayed chore

the list goes on
but i can’t speak it out loud
or answer it when i ask you all about
what are you scared of?
so i just say spiders, and move on.

(Object exhibits signs of failed assimilation.)

Status: Contained
Linguistic Output: Coherent, irregular
Affective Display: Incongruent
Recommended Handling: Minimal stimulation. Avoid mirrors.

The subject presents as humanoid,
though not reliably.
Eye contact flickers
like corrupted footage.
Speech arrives in fragments—
intonation unaligned with emotional content.

Dissection reveals a nervous system
braided too tightly with memory.
Repetitive behaviors observed:
rocking, muttering, hands folding themselves into familiar shapes.
(Suspected ritual. Possibly maintenance.)

Internal monologue transmits without consent.
Rooms echo with words never said aloud.
Fluorescent lights elicit panic.
Soft voices do not soothe.

When touched, the subject stiffens—
not out of fear,
but anticipation.
It has learned that affection
is often the prelude to calibration.

Attempts to socialize the unit
resulted in increased corruption of the core files.
Subject now mimics human response
with impressive accuracy—
until asked why it feels.

(Subject does not answer.
Subject cannot answer.
Emotion was mapped to motor function and never returned.)

MRI shows dense clusters in the empathy regions—
but no signal reaches them without distortion.
The static is ancestral.
Passed down like brittle teeth
and sleeplessness.

Diet: Low on metaphor, high on survival.
Vocal tone: Polished, practiced, passively pleading.
Favorite phrase:

“I’m fine.”
Always said too quickly.
Always accompanied by the twitch of a jaw
trying not to scream.

Touch triggers feedback loops.
Silence is tolerated, then weaponized.
Intimacy met with suspicion—
not due to paranoia,
but pattern recognition.

You may observe it,
but do not mistake this for consent.
The subject learned visibility.
It was never offered belonging.

End-stage masking leaves the organism
hollowed.
Dissociative hum in place of thought.
Apathy mistaken for stability.

Last recorded statement before regression:

“If I act human long enough,
does that mean I was?”

It is not currently speaking.
It watches.

(what lives in me before I understand)

It begins in my body
long before my mind arrives.
A surge, a flicker,
a trembling at the root of me
that says:
we are already feeling.

There is no stillness
that does not ripple.
No calm
that doesn’t carry the hum beneath it -
not peace,
but a kind of readiness.
Like lightning waiting just behind the skin.

I used to try to stop it.
To breathe it away.
To silence it
before it unraveled me in front of someone else.

But it only grew sharper in the hiding.
It only screamed louder
the more I tried to be soft.

Now,
I listen.

Not because I’m unafraid,
but because I’m done pretending
this isn’t me.

This intensity -
it isn’t a problem.
It’s a language.
One I’ve been speaking since before I had words.
Maybe even longer.
Maybe it was handed down,
a birthright carved from all the grief
my blood couldn’t name.

It leaves when it wants to.
Returns just as quickly.
There is no asking it to stay gone.
Only learning
not to run
when it comes back.

And so I live
with this current in me.
I build small shelters around it.
I move gently
but not away.

I say:
I hear you.
You don’t have to beg.

i peel myself back,
looking for skin.
for bone.
for something warm-blooded
and nameable.

but there’s only
mood swings - ADHD?
echolalia - autism.
hobbies that turn to hunger -
special interests.
talking too much - ADHD.
talking too little - trauma. Or is that autism?
flinching at softness - trauma.
stimming - trauma. Or ADHD?
people-pleasing - trauma.
Shutting down - trauma.
Or were those also autism?

what isn’t accounted for?

when i laugh,
is it because i’m happy
or because it’s the safest sound to make?

when i sit in silence,
is it peace
or practiced disconnection?

was i ever whole,
or was i built
out of reaction,
adaptation,
survival?

do i still count
as a person?

i truly cannot tell.
but if i don’t -
that’s okay.

because this is who i am now.
a map of every exit i had to take.
a body full of reroutes.
a nervous system that remembers everything.

even if nothing here
was born purely,
even if it all came from need -

what’s left
is, well, what I have left.

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 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.

they never taste it
just name the temperature
call it healing when I rinse the wound
like I’m not just keeping it from festering long enough
to stay pretty

I let them near
not in
they cup their hands to the faucet
sip whatever slips through the cracks
and call it closeness
but they never stay long enough
to feel the sting

I swallow static
talk in softened sounds
bite down on my sharpened tongue
translate their language
before they can call mine foreign..
again

I bleed behind a smile
they call me safe
like I haven’t been carrying a fire in my throat
for years

sometimes I scream into a drain
just to hear what doesn’t echo back.
sometimes I open my mouth
and it’s all salt
and no water.

I’ve spent too long cleaning the mess
before they step inside
apologizing for the shape of me
before they even ask the question

now I gargle saltwater
until my voice is too raw to speak
until silence feels more honest
than telling the truth
to someone who won’t keep it

let them ask
let them knock
let them misname my ritual.
I’ll be in the quiet
spitting out blood
like it’s poetry
and still being called beautiful
for surviving.