Hallowed
I always thought it would feel easier somehow to be
a proper person.
I thought that the reality of normality would be
simpler, more natural, to accept
that I got up today and did normal things,
that I slept eight easy hours and woke up again refreshed and
contented, that I watched a movie or went out with some people,
To think of myself as a person who
works for charity and thinks about university.
And didn’t feel like I was going to die today,
like I was going to choke on my own fear and self-loathing,
going to fall where I stood with exhaustion,
too tired to be happy.

The boredom of self-acceptance makes me
restless and tired,
I am afraid that if I let myself be normal,
no one will save me if I fall again.
Maybe that was why I wrote my sadness into my skin
A blood inking of the spinning in my mind,
a body half my own, testament to where there was once madness and
now only memories of another person remain,
someone exactly like me only distant from myself.
The scars of days gone past in a haze of misery.

I am strung to the recollection of
comforting sadness.
Sitting up in bed at night, opening the window wide and
breathing in summer air, checking the horizon for something
reassuring, the orange of a street light, grey houses, solace in
insomnia.
Pressed against the sharpness and the whirling of
damage, blaming and needing and hiding,
twisted and empty and never quite achieving. I
miss it and still fear it, a part of me I keep
hallowed, safe, quiet in the corner of me, in case I
need it again.