in the wake

I was sore,
bandaged on the side
looking for comfort
in my heart beating on a screen;


the ceiling was my shelter
and I had plenty of time
to get familiar with the cracks
along it's ridges,


I remembered how you promised,
but that was before you injected
and forgot that stars exist at all


and then you drove me home,
half awake, half alive.
you were no one, with nowhere to go
but I loved you anyway.



I stayed sober, I stayed clean.
Seeing what it did to you changed me,
so I didn't touch it again,
not even when you tried to force
the needle in my vein as you raped me

you forgot who we were
or that I was just a little girl
you forgot that I was 16,
that I didn't ask to be born,
that I didn't want this life


you were a big man talking of wars and big dreams.
we ate ice cream as you talked of nuclear holocausts
and the way her green eyes made you feel alive inside.
but I promised you, if you could give up all of it,
that I'd still be waiting, that maybe we could have it all.


but she got you.
and I lost.



I've lost a part of myself in clean, white, sterile sheets
as it seeped from between my legs
as the bruise under my left eye seemed to get bluer.
I have an IV in my arm and they've told me you're dead.
And I'm not surprised and I'm not crying.



But, I loved you.


But, you loved them more.


We scream, dismembered, staggering in the wake
of our bitter realities, at the bottom of a bio-hazardous
red, chemical bag.

It says, "Do Not Touch."

But what do I have to lose?
Because you took the best thing away from me.

I am weak and thin now.
Barely eating, never smiling, never looking out the window.




You did this to me.
My heart did this to me.


I've lost her, our baby girl.
I lost her in the ruin.


I lost you.
But, I lost you a long time ago.


And I lost me,
probably forever.