Layer by layer
Fundamentally,
Torn down to the bulb at the centre of her,
She was afraid.
Everything she was composed of
Built outward from that undiluted disturbance of self,
And from that hatred,
And then rage,
And then the pulp of the rest of her, bleached white from being washed up and
Dried on loathing.
She feels, more often than she would like,
The reality of her whole self being
Titrated through the nothingness of existence.
Here, gone,
There is only the difference of what we know, which is
Again, nothing.
Often, behind closed eyelids,
It seems very probable, to the point of immanence even,
She will dissolve, leave, seamlessly
Integrate back into the void from which she came,
Full of silver swimming dots and blue
Haze and questions free from the anxiety of needing an answer.
She finds herself to be unreal upon close,
Scrutinizing, painful
Inspection. She finds herself at large wanting
To exist, but at the core, in the centre,
At the ticking of her heart next to your ear,
Loud enough to
Burst a drum, hating it,
Hating the constraints, hating the
Hardness of it all, wanting
To let go.
You made her feel inadequate upon
Her already earthquake ravaged core.
That is not your fault.
You’re not to blame that she
Cries when she feels joy, already
Untethered enough, already
Swimming, already
Despising you for making her feel anything at all.
She weaves chains throughout,
To tie her to the earth windblown
Tumbling across minefields and continents,
Not so much like anchors as
Heartstrings, or veins pumping hot
Lava blood. Chains are
Wishes. Chains are
People we
Die in pieces for, but
Always whole in the end,
In her core,
There is no end.
She is never often here,
The last time that happened was
Before she started to think, how
Well she can despise
herself, how
Easy it is to find the empty
Aching ringing echoes
In her body, without
Your love and
Your hate.
One time
I live my life on edges
Like this one time I was on the brink of understanding love that doesn’t die
But fear came out in dry sobs and I woke up after the tsunami,
Just a ghost,
And not even haunting the same place anymore
The edges materialize as nights
Like this one time I was running in the rain and you caught up to me
And told me you had loved me since September
But miscommunication and mistakes became a barbed wire fence
Like a shadow
I thought I could see it but then the lights turned on
Dalhousie Poets is a rotating column in the Gazette’s Art & Lifestyle section featuring poetry by students on various subjects. Interested in submitting your verse? Email arts@dalgazette.com.
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