What is hurt?
What is pain?
How could anyone explain what lies inside
Behind sleepless eyes and the fermenting sound of these cries

I could never try to describe
you,
the endless layers of a person whose presence was light and whose arms were gold
whose wrists were beautiful and whose laugh was the sun

I never knew who I was
i d e n t i t y
what is it
who am I
Oh,
Is everything beyond my comprehension?
Is there a point to even try?

I recall broken memories
footsteps in shadow
souls entwined
like the knots of my hair
I said I loved a boy once
who now I can’t even look
in the eye

Despair like salt and regret like fire
Burning and falling and
Spinning until there is nothing left but these repressed memories,
shattered pieces of glass
reflecting the worst of me

I am not that girl
The worst of me was simply the best of someone else
I remember looking in the mirror, crying at my reflection
All ribs and gaped teeth and broken bits of humanity

Was I trying to become just another shadow on the wall?
unnoticed, unheard
the voice of silent suffering
Perhaps I thought I was a better ghost than a human
How wrong I would prove myself to be

In the night hope came to me-
if there truly is fate, it must have been foreshadowing
yellow bird,
early morning,
late night,
curiosity underwent a metamorphosis
into ardent affection
we shed our old skin like fragile chrysalises
yet we are much more than butterflies