My protector?
Yeah. Right.
Like the night
of my seventeenth
when i was left alone to cry in my room
and a frozen cake was left on the counter for whoever to devour.

My confider?
If you
ever knew
about the little lies
i told to keep you at bay and out of my hair
when really, the worse I’ve ever done was pretend to be on the run,

you would never trust me to breathe on my own.
Not that you ever trusted me to be alone.

Is it because of her?
The one i’m supposed to look up to?
Admire and love?

i feel like an empty hope
chest, the one you started years ago
when i had no idea what time meant.

Cornered into a bleak room
where the light turns my skin sallow,
i refuse to let the sun in.

You enter without knocking
to find me staring at the ceiling,
trying to find meaning in the freckled designed.

You leave without a word.
You didn’t see my face,
did you?

i guess i was in the right place
for you to not notice.
i was always sent back to the corner
the moment my lids filled with the salt clouded tears.

Pushed me away until you saw a way
to make me claw my way back up
from the windowless cell i called home.
The one with the sallowing light
that saw me on the best and worst of nights.

Did it make you feel better
to shout at someone who didn’t shout back?
Someone you could forget as soon as you remembered
until you found another way
for my limped claws to show themselves?

I gave up on opening your eyes
when I gave up on opening the shade.