a room of life and death | girl/imagined | a poem

I felt your dead hand in mine

and forgot how to speak

*

I pretended to be a version of myself

that never existed

and let her pay you a visit

I walked her there

I walked myself to you

built up the courage

and felt myself perform

for you

*

you and I

only happened in darkness

*

I belonged to anyone else

before I belonged to myself

*

what you did with your body

with mine

and what was in my head

and what I did

never made it on the same page

*

we were raised by pages and papercuts

not books

*

I lived in my own world

and I shut you out

because ruins paved your way

*

I liked you better in my imagination

*

I look at the faces of the girls you left behind

I’m still mourning them all

*

they picked up their hearts

and bodies

and souls

and became women

*

my shed skins

are stained

by an executed idea

acts of pressured performance

and you still eat them for breakfast

*

in you I found an unfulfilling conclusion

*

I ended us both

and for once

no words needed to be said

*

you’d never understand

you collect and discard

you haunt and revisit

but I burned our house down

*

I touch the cold rigid fingers

and pour my life into them