Taciturn confessions, holding  
my face at a tilt. How did I  
get here? Holding half the truth,  
the silence and the fury in my body,  
rigid when engaged. How many   
people will try to touch me, how  
many times will I turn to stone?  
Alone in crowded rooms, fingernails  
digging into forearms, tongues  
in my mouth with unpleasant textures  
I have learned to laugh, sublime  
the sorrow, catch the light at the   
right angle. I have learned to borrow  
the affects of others, muddle my misery  
into a more collective expression    

But dirty dishes and dirtier drugs   
still cloud my mind, try as I might  
I still remember my limbs pinned down  
You watching me squirm like a specimen  
you pulling the reactions from me like  
currency, reliable as clockwork, I was always  
so easy to provoke, and my voice still chokes  
up in my throat, just like you wanted it to    

You said you wanted to ruin me, and it's  
true that those who've followed behind you  
weren't able to get close, or else got too close,  
rubbing up against the barrier of my scars  
but 'ruin'  
is a permanent state of being, and I was already  
permeable long before I met you. How else  
could you have lodged yourself in my synapses,   
left tracers in the corner of my eye,  
let him leave me weeping on an endless March afternoon  
  
Damage is cyclical; pain begs   
to be repeated. They've hired a girl  
prettier than me for the reenactment   
but she doesn't wear the trauma, leave  
the agony in her footsteps. On my own private stage,   I'll keep carving hieroglyphs into my body  
until I bleed out every note of your scent 