Tag: self-harm

My sheer house

My sheer house is miniscule,
But here and now a lyric
Could take sublime molecules,
Make time's victory pyrrhic.

I give you this offering:
How I lived, a wish afloat
On songs of hope, softening
The wrongs which our scopes promote.

My dream to be feminine,
To see myself seem pretty,
A princess with eminence;
Pinced instead: what a pity.

I grew into depression,
My true self refused, repressed.
Desire became obsession;
To my shame I was possessed.

My own eating disorder
Bound up a need for starving,
Alcohol, and discordant,
Maladaptive wrist carving.

Death was posing constantly,
Its threshold closing around
Each moment of wantingly
Reaching, alone and unfound.

But I'm alive, shockingly,
I survived at rock bottom.
He found me worth pocketing,
Crowned my cursed head with autumn.

Before I was untethered,
Poured my puzzled blood weeping;
When he brought us together,
He bent thoughts that lie creeping.

A half-dozen medicines,
A path that wasn't direct
At last mounted reticence,
Perhaps found something correct.

We shacked up through manifold
Setbacks, yet we grew happy
Trusting plucky animals,
Our muscovy ducks' flapping.

There's still the same confusion.
Will you blame that I re-slept
My years' yearning delusion?
I've merely learned to accept.

I've lost and gained employment,
I've tossed the rains from islands 
To focus love's enjoyment;
A voice spoke above violence.

I'll never be omniscient;
So I must weather demons,
Though I fear I'm deficient.
I know my sincere reasons.

I'm not very capable
But caught a merry lifeline.
If even I'm shapeable,
Could seasons prime our lifetimes?

To mention that important
Question: what matters really?
Is self-knowledge supporting
My shelf of solid feeling?

Am I truly self-aware,
Can I duly note defects
In myself that interfere
With my health's tender reflex?

Have I built my quality
Which sadness wilted above;
Deeply lies my policy:
To keep those I call beloved.

The Reason

Whip me
into shapes
of low, submissive 
apology;
               put your name
on each corner of the cudgel
you scour me with.

There's a reason—when it comes from you:
harsh reflections drawn from your own
dissatisfaction and insecurity,
the daunting vacuum of the future—
there's a reason it feels right
for me to take such heavy-
handed excoriation.
I deserve it.

When you hold peril above 
my head, I remember my mother
pleading, what could she do for me,
and my barbaric answer,
                                          kill me.

I look (admittedly with shame)
at the several scars up and down
my wrist and arm;
                                I recall
the frenzied self-inflicted batterings.

Life before you resurrected me,
I've told you, though it's impossible
to really know; but when your eyes
 widen with insanity,
  with mania,
   with sick rage,
it's a mirror to my history.

Not only do I deserve the castigation,
you deserve the patience I got.

I had wanted less and less,
 to be distilled into nearly nothing.
You want more and more,
 to overflow with endless bounty.
Neither of us excelled to such extents,
 but in self-abasement our tears are one.

Bash me with disdain
 for wanting nothing more,
  you have the right if I believe
   that you should humble your expectations.

What's more difficult,
to grow from nothing into something, or
to shrink from dreams to a single datum?
Hopefully somewhere
 in the middle,
  where we draw each other,
   is the right place for us.

Certainly it's more difficult
to be found in your circumstances,
nomadic, isolated, uprooted;
I can never fathom the horror 
of watching your mother deteriorate,
jaundiced and dessicated until
she finally passed away.
    Without Mom I would
      have self-destructed.

You're right
 when you tell me I don't know you.
We have our differences,
  but I want to give you
   the things I have that you never did.