What I Never Wrote

 It's as simple as looking in the mirror,

not knowing if my eyes are playing tricks on me or

if that person looking back at me really isn't me at all,

nor even really isn't someone I know or

even really someone who should be classified as a someone at all, but 

is really nothing more than a silhouette of nothing,

a manifestation of fear

of being the nothingness I know 

I've felt like in the past &

saying absolutely nothing, but

even that silence starting that flam 

to kick off a forest fire like a house party

I already know I can not contain the damages.

Believe me, I know I've been here before, but yet

still a fool for not learning from the landmines

that without warning killed parts of me 

where she stood. 

I know what you are going to say,

something about the fact

I haven't even fucking tried yet, but

still, I'm bitching & moaning about it,

as if it had just happened out of the blue &

there wasn't warning signs along the way,

that I blew off like an anxious teenager

ignoring the back of a cigarette box,

not caring about repercussions, but 

wanting to come crawling back for help

after ignoring the help

just like you've seemed to have convinced yourself

that's all I do in my poems, or

is the only true reason why I've been so depressed lately.

Or something along the lines with that I need to keep my chin up &

keep pushing on, but

as far as I'm concerned 

it would be harder for me to tell you

all of what I have not yet written.

About how this is not my first uncomfortable tango 

with the touchy old skeleton that is my mental health

nor is it with the toxic boy that is my silence,

that has his own way to touch me,

to hold his hand over my mouth

while whispering lullabies of insecurity,

that he convinced me only he could protect me from or

the first time that I've been left with nothing, but 

the devastation that both of them caused once 

I gathered the guts to ever fight back & speak my mind,

leaving me with the wildfire aftermath

once the flams my words sparked finally caught up with me.

It's as simple as me not turning my struggles into metaphors, but

asking you without the metaphors 

I swattle my struggles in like newborn babies,

what more are they than what seems normal for others to have?

I tell you that it's all that I haven't written,

all that I allow myself to keep hidden in its storage,

somewhere nobody, 

not even my parents would bother to try & read into.

Somewhere that when my silence finally allows me to love again

my lover won't ever have to worry about seeing all the scares that I still hide from everybody.

I know, I know I think about it too much,

I know it almost seems as if I overthink as much as I breathe or

as if I sleep & want to dream as much as I

plaster a smile on my face just wide & bright enough

for you to compliment me, 

dig a hole deeper and deeper, six feet below,

so it won't easily resurface to haunt 

In the future, I keep trying to find shelter in

It's as simple as looking at an old photo book &

being able to tell you about the mental war that took place behind that smile or

how uplifted I actually felt just to be able to be genuine enough to smile again.

"Oh, here we go again. Making up stuff like the world is a stage,

like every conversation I have with you is a long storytime," but

what you don't know is all the poems that I've written out of spite & 

thrown them to the side of existence,

making them as if never being written at all.

It's as simple as being told they love me,

the they being a male outside of my father,

possibly, someone, I feel the same right back,

me feeling like maybe they meant this time,

yet feeling as if it's too little too late, but 

still wouldn't dear become vulnerable enough to tell him that  &

literally, feel whatever is left of me digging herself

six feet deeper within myself,

having died from a PTSD induced heart attack,

one that trapped her in an always lasting 

cold clammy sweat

all alone without real context,

of what happened in real-time

without a proper barrel, but 

then again what family would 

even be left to mourn her death?