Soft Enough To Bleed

Part 18: Wash. Rinse And Repeat.

Wash Rinse And Repeat..

(this time I mean it)

Some mornings I wake up tired,

From surviving sleep.

Dreams run me down like wolves -

Fangs made of every conversation

Where I laughed too loud to hide the crying.

My pillow knows more about me than my mother does.

I wish it didn't.

I write confessions on my bathroom mirror

In toothpaste and tears:

You are not the sum of this ache.

But, the ache keeps doing the math -

And I always come up short.

Wash.Rinse.Repeat.

I answer "I'm fine" so well,

They ought to hire me to teach it.

I could run workshops on masking despair;

How to hold a coffee cup without spilling the tremors,

How to talk about weekend plans while ignoring the voice humming

my sad playlist.

I read somewhere that every cell in the body,

Renews itself every seven years.

So explain to me,

Why my sadness keeps outliving my skin.

Why my bones learned to ache before they learned to dance.

Why my mind built a prison inside my ribs and called it "home."

Wash.Rinse.Repeat.

My friends light candles for me.

Send affirmations:

"You are loved. You are needed."

I believe them for four minutes.

Then the brain gremlins whisper,

"You're a burden. You're an echo.

You're dead weight that won't die."

I take showers so hot,

I pray they boil the black out of my head.

But water only burns skin -not the storm underneath it.

Wash.Rinse.Repeat.

I quit therapy once,

Because the lady kept asking about my childhood.

I barely remember my childhood.

I don't remember last Thursday.

I only remember the dread,

The taste of metal on my tongue,

The miracle of pretending.

Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like

To not drag this sadness like a rock tied to my ankles.

To be soft - not fragile.

To sit in a quiet room,

And hear only silence, not monsters,

Breeding new nightmares in my skull.

Wash.Rinse.Repeat.

This is not a poem.

This is a confession with no redemption arc.

No silver lining stitched in neat stanzas.

This is me telling you that on most days

Hope feels like an overdraft -

I keep spending it, and I keep owing it more.

I want to live.

I swear to God I want to live.

Even when my bones say, "Quit."

Even when my heartbeat writes eulogies inside my chest.

Even when tomorrow promises nothing

But, the same four walls and a brain,

That bruises itself for sport.

Wash.Rinse.Repeat.

One day I, I hope I might find the switch -

The one that says;

Cycle over. Darkness evicted.

You get to breathe like normal people now.

But right now, I just want you to know;

I'm still here.

That's the bravest thing I do.

That's the only holy thing I know how to do.

Wash.Rinse.Repeat.

And stay.