The Guest Room

1. Your eyes look like the ocean,

Full of wonder and mystery,

And inviting me in,

I had to take a swim.

 

2. Your veins ran like rivers down your forearms,

I wanted to trace them with my finger tips,

Let my nail cut the vein

And let your beautiful water pour out with the secrets you kept inside.

 

3 times you said my name before I heard you.

 

4 times you asked me if I wanted to leave the party.

The music was hurting your ears,

My voice echoed into silence and you wanted to hear its beautiful melody in

 

5 Times I said I wanted to stay,

But on the sixth day I said okay.

 

7 minutes passed before we stood in your room,

And I saw the night fall on your eyes,

How thirsty your veins were for me to fall into your body.

If only I had seen the secrets you kept inside,

You hid yourself so well.

 

8. A cold body,

Nothing but bone and skin with frozen blood that keeps me from feeling.

 

9. But I can still feel.

10. But I can still feel.

11. But I can still feel.

 

12. I live in a house but sleep in the guest room

Have to ask if I can eat this cereal or that bread

Have to ask where the bathroom is every time I have to go

Have to ask the quickest way to the grocery store

 

13. I sleep in the guest room and the house is my body

 

14. I walk down the hallway knowing

That this is the same hallway he lets laughter linger on his lips like a lullaby

That this is the same hallway he smiles so smoothly, easily dismissing the stabbing he did to my skin

That this is the same hallway his footsteps fall like fireballs in a forest.

 

15. The hallway is his hallway and I do not walk I run

 

16. I’m falling down a bottomless well wondering

If someone will remember I fell,

If someone will hear my now silent screams echo in the darkness but know that the screams are getting louder even though the air has silenced them,

If someone will ever catch me, let me stop falling and take a breath without trying

 

17. They say he pushed me down the well,

I did not fall.

And the bottomless well is not bottomless at all.

 

I am 18 now and I still don’t believe them.

I wonder when I will.

 

19. I’m not asking if I can eat the cereal and bread anymore,

Sometimes I sleep in my own bed not the guest room.

 

20. I can’t hear his laughter anymore,

And I’m starting to jog instead of run.

 

21 bones I broke when I hit the bottom of the well.

I’m covered in bruises.

 

22. I was wrong.

These aren’t bruises at all.

My blood has become gasoline.

 

23 miles I have to run to find the instruction book that can tell me how to glue the pieces of skin he tore off,

But I am made of gasoline,

I can keep moving.

 

24. The pieces he tore off are regrowing

Twenty-five thousand times I’ve had to tell myself I’ll be ok.

And I will.

I will become whole again because I am a Rising Survivor.

This poem is about: 
Me

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