i was…

the person you were, and the lost potential of who you are now.

from pinterest split image

I was.. I was..

who was I?

I was somebody once, a tiny shell of a baby, with feelings cradled inside her every limb. Not knowing that life was going to hit her in the face only a few years, after she made her first wish. That when she blew out birthday candles and had her face smothered in chocolate cake, she would turn five and then six, and her dreams would fall from her ever-living brain like a pretty rain shower, like the confetti stream that drifts on human skin in innocent celebration.

How life was suddenly like a bad dream and wishes on birthday cakes were curses. Like I had opened an umbrella too many times inside the living room and was cursed with seven years of existential bad luck. Or maybe I shattered too many mirrors, and the cracked glass reflected the truth. I was born with treacherous insides, vile gory sludge, and black ichor for blood, a vermin-filled creature with poison that spews on beautiful mouths. I kill everyone I touch, one drop, one dose of bad luck and you’re gone, you disintegrate like you were never born.

Like existence is fleeting and associations with dangerous organisms means you catch the misfortune too. Like an unlucky rabbit’s foot, it just gets tossed around and the cycle continues, dominoes fall one by one, you tear your hand out of my grip, but it doesn’t matter the poison always reaches. Always stretches across skin like it could kiss your palm gently, almost like a lover’s touch. The way we all fall even if we take each other with us, especially then.

I was.. I was..

Something when I was young, when I was eight or nine, I still had potential and the weight of uncarried baggage wasn’t fully bestowed upon my back. When dreams were filled with innocent soft spotted deer that are now only hunted and slaughtered, like roadkill on neighborhood farms. When silly wishes blown across birthday candles come true, but now we only know the action of tradition. A thing we do by habit, a wish we can’t even name, can’t even be hopeful for.

It’s silly the things we did when we thought we were untouchable, like we were special and not just the same old kids we used to be now. Like we don’t have the same mannerisms or dimple in our left cheek. Like we don’t like the same nostalgic things because they remind us of a better existence.

Like maybe the world wouldn’t touch us when we were children, because we were protected by a barrier and nothing could get in or out of it. Like armor on the foundation of the living, or a shield for enemies on the battlefield.

The real truth is that we can all be defeated, that no barrier in the entire world can keep us protected. Foundations will crumble without support and shields will dent and wear down with defeat.

Bandages will only stop wounds for so long and if you don’t change them, they will become infected. Rot will spread in the sinew of our flesh and you will die slowly and painfully, but all the same if you’re not careful.

Pain lives in the roots of us, sometimes it weaves its way in like an annoying pest, it’s who we are, if we don’t give ourselves another name.

I was.. I was..

I am.

A girl who only ever grew to have the same heart. Whose every breath is still measured in case her pretty poison reaches across the distance without a touch. Who closes her eyes for silly wishes, like she won’t be starved. But she’s not a child, she can’t make wishes and people can be starved. All -consuming, within time, it doesn’t matter. Like praying for a certain dream will mean it comes true in an instant, it doesn’t. Time is like a constraint, it wraps its way around my throat hoping I choke. Some days I think it would be easier just to choke, like I could expel all the nastiness inside and that would make the creature in me normal and whole.

I swear to people I was something, but they can only ever see the person I am now. They don’t know the little girl who had big dreams, who has changed, but simply remains the same and always will. They don’t believe that I’ve gained as a person cause I still look like me and I still kill everyone I touch. I wonder if I could change my skin like a chameleon, take the shape of someone new, and wonder if they’d believe in me then. If I’d stop poisoning the people I love and letting them leave me because they think I’m worth less.

who am I?

I’m her.

The girl in the story, is me.

We’re intertwined.

I’m still the same, always the same. Even when I want to be different.

-stephthepoet