A Study in Drowning Alive

A Poem

Photo by Matt Walsh on Unsplash

if i said
all i needed was you —
would you look at me
as if i were insane?

it’s not a matter
of my fragmented mental health
or my sadness glittering in shards
of shades better than me —

i’m not a poet
(i'm not, i'm not, i’m not) —
but whenever i think of you,
the lines bleed out

as if i’m on a table
and they’ve excavated my insides
until all they saw was my beating heart
with your name scarred into the tissue

it’s been
so many years already
and i’m so tired
of denying what i felt

i hated being your acquaintance
when i’d rather be at a desk adjacent to you,
chained for forty hours a week if need be,
just to trace the outline of you and fill in the flesh

and i was so sorry
to cut you off
like a bad habit
but you were my bad habit