Dear Old Self

 Dear Old Friend

You were a childhood friend that only i could see

He grew with me, from an occasional visitor into a dark and handsome voice that drew me

Into a cycle I couldn’t see, blind-walking with his hand gripping mine

I’m never allowed to walk out of line

He moved into my mind and decided to build a home and threw parties that I never wanted to be at

He invited all new friends, Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Lust, Insecurity for poker games gambling for my sanity and who would own me that day

“I’m protecting you, don’t you understand? What else have I not given you?!”

“You’re always shaking and crying! Shut your mouth! I built you a home, I’ve brought you oceans, I’ve bought you privacy, I’ve bought you attention?”

“You bought me things I never asked for at the price of my own happiness”

“What do you need happiness for when you can have all of me!?”

“I don-”

“Say something one more time and what happened last time will be so much worse.”

You punched me square in the chest, restarting my heart to beat to your pace, tachycardia

Marching to the rhythm of your voice, made me cough up fears that you’ve implanted into my memories while I slept

Threats built walls around my heart, you shoved vulnerability and truth into a locked closet

You brought me to oceans of thoughts you’ve built with your hands, opaque water that resembled concrete streets I was never allowed on

The waves have enveloped my body and I’ve drowned so many times that my lungs have learned to recycle the saltwater into condensation that spills from my eyes

Your hands muffled my sobs mixed with agonizing anger because no one else could see what you were doing to me except me

My arms are striated with rope burns from the times you tied me limb to limb pressed up against a glass window foggy with hyperventilated oxygen

You forced my eyes to watch my family and friends walk by because the exterior was a mental asylum but on the inside I learned to call it home

You’ve tied puppet strings and painted my face with yellow dye 5 happiness and red number 50 smiles

I dance on a stage built from the lies you’ve decorated so well it almost looks like genuinity and truth

The orchestra plays screeching symphonies that haunt the room and fall on deaf ears

Only I can hear the music

Counting my steps, my inhales and exhales, your laugh is nails on a chalkboard

My soul shudders at the familiar vibrations that run through my brain

Sparks nervous pathways until i’m a stuttering tick-tic-ticking time bomb

You had me on my knees, spitting prayers out with every exhale and inhale, relaxing on top of my bedside table growing bigger with every hyperventilation, and then one day you’re gone

And my body seems to drift in silence like the fallen leaves in the dead of autumn on top of the ocean of fears that wave from outside my window

My strength returns to my limbs and my faith returns breath to my lungs

Resilience lines the rungs of my DNA like ladders

And I’m not afraid of looking down at the view because I know where I’m going when I die, pitter patter

You desperately walk around the house that I’ve built now

You wonder and wander around locked out of my mind, how

You might ask, have I learned the truth? I opened up the Word of God and found what I’m made to be, what I’m truly defined to be, and you’ve never been a part of me

You were a boot leg illusionist, a conartist selling me out to the cheap and silicone cell I had the power to open all this time

I don’t have to speak to you in rhymes, but you loved to confuse me with poetic lies so I thought it would be fitting to feed you poetic truth

I’m smiling at you from inside my home, where I’ve always belonged, careless to the outside world’s humiliation and ridicule, only one King rules in this house, you

Have spent too long in my mind, it’s time for you to move out and swallow your own medicine

This is my last letter to you, you’ll never hear from me ever again

You’re welcome to burn this letter, it’s what you do best, burning the truth up with your fingers and smoke billowed in the sky, real high, smoke signals went off

But your lies were compacted too deep into my ears and I was no better than deaf to reality

I’m doing you a favor and welcoming you to your own reality

That you are no longer welcome in my mind because it’s mine and God’s alone

Will Never Be Yours Truly,

Gabrielle Morales