It’s strange to sometimes feel like an empty box of memories, the pictures inside my mind have been ripped apart or burnt to ash.
People’s faces are scratched off.. cut out.
A coping mechanism meant to protect me I’m told.
It’s even stranger to know that once upon a time I was actually whole, a piece of glass with no smudges or cracks.
But now if you shake me hard enough you’ll be able to hear the broken glass rattling back and forth.
Sometimes when I look in the mirror all I can see are the cracks and jagged edges of what’s been put back together.
Little blue shards of a little blue girl, still sitting in her little red wagon.
Sitting and waiting for someone to see her.. to help her.
But what’s done is done.. that little girl has long been buried and forgotten.
It’s the puzzle she left behind that gets me lost sometimes.
The mystery behind her eyes.. my eyes.
It scares me..
It’s the crooked man in my nightmares that shackles my limbs and twists his mouth into the most terrifying smile I’ve ever seen that does me in.
It’s a demon that smelt like cigarettes and sweet patchouli with his hands held open, waiting for that woman to hand over what she owed.
Her own children.
I can’t break open for anyone to see, the skin is too torn and I don’t feel like me, I don’t even smell like me.
I smell like them and the scent seeps into my nostrils like a putrid fog and leaves me gagging and gasping for air.. something clean, anything will do. As long as it’s untainted and untouched by them.
And when sleep can’t chase everything away I whisper all my truths into a dark room, into the empty spaces.
How precarious to sleep with those whispers hanging over my head, shards of dangling glass.
But it’s worse to try and swallow them down.
Or to pretend like they haven’t left scars or pieces of themselves imbedded into my skin.
I swear sometimes it feels like if a stranger stares hard enough they’ll be able to see the reflective surfaces of those imbedded pieces.
Each piece is ugly.. it’s a picture or a scene of what’s inside me.. of what happened to me.
And God help anyone who can see it..