Someone lives inside my skin.

I don’t know her, but she knows everything.

She urgently insists that I will never be enough,

while she stares at shadows that climb

the walls like spiders.

She demands I break the line

here, not there. I think she is a masochist.

Someone pulled at her soul

with grinding teeth, ripped her to shreds.

She can’t escape herself.

She doesn’t know what this is —

this love that follows the dash.

She smiles with her tongue behind her teeth,

and closes her lips because she feels ugly.

Every crumb is too much pain.

Each mark and bulge reminding her of

everything that she is not,

what she never was and what

she lost. I think I tried to cut her

out.

The wounds are there, they tell of times

she tried to eviscerate the hope within —

the hope that looked like darkness,

sinking, always sinking.

She drifts as if within a dream,

in wait of light to sift through cracks

where drops of sun and rain touch her.

Feeling is dangerous.

She can’t tell hands that are good from

hands that are bad.

So she tells me everything is black.

By Melissa Lemay

From: United States