Psychosis

Mentally, I am far below the plane of my earthly existence. It’s been years since the abuse, yet it’s fresh in my face; unlaced. 

The bold I held in me, far from view, my subconcious dragging the past into the present with nowhere to run. 

I lay still, beside a body that will not wake, alone in the dark with nothing but my thoughts and the shadows. 

I had buried his face, hidden it beneath who I had become, but he’d returned, uninvited, imposing on the Me i’d fought to be.

Trees rustle beyond layers of walls, the ones I built around myself at eight years old, the ones that house my body and my fear; brick invisibility. 

It’s too early for the birds but i’m praying for their singing to fill the silence. 

Panic creeps into my pores, stifling my breath, stiffening the body that’s stayed tense. 

They tell me he’s gone, delusional, their favourite word. They don’t see him standing right beside me, hand around my throat, blade bare. 

I can’t close my eyes for relief, he hides behind my eyelids. I can’t speak my truth, his fingers locked around my vocal chords. I can’t wash him from my body, I know, i’ve tried.

I feel the breath of his ghost heat my shoulder and I am frozen. Transported back two decades, twelve year old Me, too scared to speak, trapped in time. 

Little girl still inside my head, whispering, afraid to be heard. Run.

And I am running, stumbling, fleeing every building that ever promised to keep me safe and lied, lied, lied.

Doors that hide secrets, wide open behind me. Silence dispersed in my escape. 

My pace wakes the birds, they flee their nests with me. And I am laughing. Fear clawing at every organ in my body, my legs become wings and I am soaring out of reach.  

I hear them calling, their own fear bubbling on their tongues and I can’t distinguish between the love and the pain.

So I keep racing, the past to my left, the future to my right, Me, in the middle, in the present, shooting through time, an inability to know what, who, came when.

And i’d rather lose myself to the wind and the leaves than the bricks that kept me hidden through the suffering. 

To relive him every day is my psychosis.