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Chapter 1
When they say that all of this is in your head.

They are correct. It lives there, a tenant I never invited, no rent is offered, only pain paid in full. The tears act as an unpaid water bill. The pipes fill, sometimes left alone for days, quite like myself.

They stay this way, not only by my will but the thing you say lives in my head, calls me weak if I allow them to spill.

One small drop drips from the faucet, and the knife splayed out on the counter, for occasions such as these, one small drop and blood is what fills the pipes, the water diluting them, much like the way he diluted me into thinking I was wrong for letting the faucet exist at all.

Chapter 2
He called me weak.

Sometimes he verbalized it, other times his eyes screamed it. No wonder his eyes were always red with rage whenever he took the time to look in the rear-view mirror. I was always sat in the back, waiting to be spoken to.

Ones who say words could never hurt as much as a shattered bone have never been told they looked ugly by the person who was supposed to look at them like a limited-edition Barbie doll.

Chapter 3
Why was it so hard to love me?

I was not broken then. You broke me with time. Time heals all they say. Time killed my soul and left it in an alleyway for the shadows to take home.

I was a small child, a blank canvas ready to be painted with vivid colours life had mixed long before I was born. Where did those colours go? I was so young when I received them. The times when I was able to make my own colours, mixing mine with others. I don’t remember what they look like. Those bright and vivid life colours.

The night you decided to come into my room through the window like a thief ready to steal my childhood, much the tooth fairy steals teeth.

You took my paint pots.

You stole my brushes.

You stared at my sleeping form with a smile that slithered onto your face, much like the snake that has constricted my heart all these years.

From the corners of your lips that spewed insults at me like a machine gun would bullets, all the way to your ears that could hear my eyes form liquid, and use those lips to scream: “Stop it”.

Chapter 4
“I’m fine”

This is my version of sanity. I may write poetry but this is my favorite type of rhyme. It can fit in with every sentence. It’s a lie that is timeless, it was gifted to me by the shadows.

Chapter 5
“Hello, welcome to my office, I will be your psychiatrist.

Ah yes, the one who will gift me pills; the amount rivaling the number of stars in the sky. They are the first thing introduced to my tongue in the morning, rather afternoon, the nightmares refuse to let me wake any sooner.

Some are blue, others, pink and white. These are the colours of my paint pots these days. I have created new colours by mixing the premade ones from the pills, with the black and grey that replaced my rainbow pallet.

How am I supposed to play with these?

Chapter 6
“You have many talents.”

This one is a classic. I have painted one canvas and somehow I have now replaced Picasso. Written a few pages and now I have grown a beard, changed skin tone, one that will most certainly give me the privilege of a white man, and transformed into Edgar Allan Poe

I am not special because I can write a few pretty words and make them tell a story. I am not extraordinary for the fact that I can google a photo of someone’s brilliant artistry and recreate a lesser version.

It is not rocket science to know, that I have yet to be something special.

Do not tell them that.

By God, keep your mouth shut about that pretty lady. Let them believe the lies that you tell them. Allow them to feel comforted by the way your smile reaches the corner of your eyes. Do not open the curtain backstage to let them see you glue and tape your smile into what they see every day.

It has taken years to perfect this craft of lies and deceit. Many years were spent teaching my body to stop producing snot while crying in the back seat of a car.

What felt like eons were used to slap myself silly whenever I felt the urge to let my feelings of dread, guilt, and whatever else felt like taking a field trip outside of the steel cage I locked them in, it took eons to teach them to stay inside.

Chapter 7
“It will be okay.”

Yes, please keep reciting that line to yourself like you will be auditioning for the role of the optimist in my ongoing life play. I’m not quite sure if I want that role to be filled.

You say these words to me as if I will somehow wake up one day without the feeling of dread that washes over me as soon as I open my eyes. Do not tell me things even you yourself, do not believe.

Chapter 8
“Life will get better”

These words are spoken more often than when I use those two words to get your nose off my trail that you so frequently follow, always sniffing for any sign of a frown.

These words do nothing but waste your breath along with my insignificant time, that has nothing important to do, but I’m sure I can find some hobby to use as an excuse to walk away from this futile and repetitive conversation.

Chapter 9
“You are beautiful”

Anytime these god awful words are spoken, I, quite often believe that whose ever mouth these syllables have come from, must be talking to a ghost, possibly the wall. They may believe these words with the whole of their intact heart that has felt no type of abuse. No pieces have fallen off, no black spots have appeared, consuming it like some sort of cancerous disease.

They may believe these words, but by no means must I follow their lead. They may be right. I may have the features of a soon to be model, ready to eat lettuce for breakfast lunch and dinner.

However, if you have somehow invented a way for one to remove and gift eyeballs for a new view, I’m afraid you must wait for the day my own eyes see what your clear ones do.

Chapter 10
“It is ok to let it all out, you have to be VULNERABLE”

I will never understand the meaning of that word. I could google it for the rest of my time on this earth, and never once understand why it is used.

Vulnerable.

Why must I be that again?

I don’t want to be.

I am very comfortable in the shallow pool of emotions I currently reside in. There is no need to travel to the vast and bottomless ocean just to be. . .

Vulnerable

My body is not used to being submerged in endless water. My kitty pool only goes up to my ankles.

No lower no higher.

I used to love to swim in the ocean. To embrace the hugs from the mermaids, sing lullabies with the sirens, make music with the crabs. There were no threats in the ocean, none at all.

Then I got older.

Then he got colder.

Then I became stuck to the mold I had created as a temporary holding cell.

The sharks came and sucked the organs out of the crabs. They stopped making music, so I had to replace it with my own playlist, created to block out the world when the sharks came to visit my kiddie pool, biting my toes with their teeth, the feeling, close to that of the knife on the counter, right next to the faucet.

When I moved out of the cave that me and the mermaids had made when we played hide and seek while my parent we screaming at each other. It sounded much like the kids at school when they took each other’s toys, except this time, the teacher never came with two toys to make them both happy, she came with papers.

Me and Benji could not read yet.

The mermaids tried to haul me back into the safety of the hollowed-out rock that I once called my playhouse.
I did not want to go back.

I no longer wanted their hugs.

When they touched me it felt like jellyfish stings.

I no longer wanted to be embraced like that. I wanted their hands by their side like the other kids in line. I took the seaweed that hung from the tip-top of that crusty old rock that started to disappear when I refused a hug, I grabbed it along with a bottle of water, that I would soon take and release the contents into my kiddie pool.

Reminding myself of the days when I was so excited to get out of bed.

I stopped singing with the sirens.

Our music tastes, no longer the same.

They continued with their futile lullabies while I balled up the corner of my kiddie pool with my headphones that have been taken over by skin, much like moss on a tree . . . they have grown on me. I sit there listening to the same playlist I made when the crabs started to decay.

Chapter 11
That look

I feel no need to elaborate, but inside of my mushy brain filled with mutilated memories, screaming visions of me sounding like a sonata of pain, there is that look that will forever have a highlighted bookmark in its chapter.

There is nothing sadder.

Chapter 12
“It’s ok they are just people.”

He was just a person.

Yet he hurt me.

People have a habit of sending pain in an envelope to people hoping for a love letter. The mailman has no choice but to deliver.

People are violent.

Have you never seen the news where that poor woman was hit on the subway because some egotistical man saw her kiss another woman? He asked for a reenactment, an encore if you will.

They said no, of course.

He did not like that answer.

I am not afraid people will hurt me physically, I have just enough energy to stop that intermission from ever existing in my play. However, that does not mean that I will allow others to come backstage.

They are not allowed to see the multiple layers of masks that hang off my face. I will keep my alternating personality tucked away, only letting out the one I need to talk to whoever comes my way on that particular day.

In my mind, people are demons without horns or teeth.

That does not mean that they do not have some underneath their bubbly personality and caring facade that almost had me believing they were trustworthy.

Their only mistake was opening their mouth to brush their teeth.

People scare me, much like the idea of being alone terrifies you.

My moss-covered headphones are the ones protecting me from meeting someone new. They could be the love of my life, my other half waiting to enchant me much the fairy godmother did Cinderella, I will not allow them to come close to me, magic wand or not.

Chapter 13
“It’s not worth it.”

Finally, we are bringing this story to an end.

I am aware.

It is not worth all of these things I have written here on this electronic device that allows me to write all of the things I am to feel at night.

It is not worth 8 pages of big words and long sentences.

But.

That does not mean that it still does not matter.

I may not want it to.

I may wish for it to leave and never return, leaving me to live the rest of my life in the ocean.

But I am comfortable believing that it does, indeed, matter.

Because as long as I believe that it does, the longer I will have to continue mixing pills to make paint pots.

The longer I will have to live with the sharks biting at my feet, not stopping until they reach the bone.

The longer I will be able to keep my headphones in the place they now call home. The longer they are there the more time I have before I have the removal surgery to open my ears once again, to the pain and misery of life and not the sweet sound of the music that I like.

I am comfortable knowing that I will stay in this hell because I have grown to like it here. . .

Style / type: 
Free verse
Review Request (Intensity): 
Please use care (this is a sensitive subject for me, do not critique harshly)
Review Request (Direction): 
How was my language use?
What did you think of the rhythm or pattern or pacing?
How does this theme appeal to you?
How was the beginning/ending of the poem?
Is the internal logic consistent?
Last few words: 
This is very special to me and also very very personal please be nice but also leave advice and ideas on how to make my writing better. Also this was written in a different format so sorry if it looks kinda funny and unorganized. It's super long and might not even be considered a poem but I like to think it is.
Editing stage: 
Content level: 
Explicit Content

Comments

Hello, your writing is good, but we don't yet have a forum for stories. Perhaps there will be one in the near future. I'm sorry for your pain and losses, Gracy

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"My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies; fairy tales of yesterday will grow but never die, I can fly, my friends.” – Freddie Mercury

this is great stuff, but unfortunately, we do not have a forum for stories. I did enjoy, [not sure that I want to use that word] your work. You have a really good [story] here. You have invoked a sense of desolation and subjugation and I read it all the way through. I do hope that you have or will write some more stuff for us, but in a shorter form, please. Maybe a vignette? I think that would be very acceptable and we could use more of those. Not many people use that form and I like them very much. ~ Geezer.
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