“You’ll never change anyway,” you say
confident in our defeat.
You are wind blowing on a stone.
It would take too long for you to make any difference.
I do not understand why you’re still trying.
You tell me that you have grown tired
of watching me spend days curled up
turning my insides into dust.
I will never change anyway.

I am the absentee parent you were never forced to have.
I am a pill you keep trying to swallow. I keep coming back up.
I am an empty stomach closing in on herself.
I am the abandoned building collapsing in on her own foundation.
I am the wild animal who chews off her own limbs,
when she is not even trapped.
I am hands gripping tighter around my own neck.
I know you cannot fix me.
I have been waiting for you to realize it.

I am the shoes you out grew but couldn’t bring yourself to throw away,
I am the used toothbrush of an ex-lover collecting dust on your bathroom sink,
and I am skin too tight stretched across protruding bone.
My insides are trying to escape me.
Everything tries to escape me.
I am an anchor. I will pull you down
because you tied me to your own legs.
I am never going to change.

Our bodies are machines.
We are nothing more than gears and levers cranking away.
I trick myself into believing that there is nothing wrong with me,
while I am rusting from the inside out.
When I am on fire, I can only convince my skin
to stop burning.
I have been pumping my body full of poisons for too long
to even remember what it feels like when I am in working order.
I wonder what I feel like when I am put together.
I wonder if I already am.
I wonder if this is as good as it gets.

I make myself small. I try to take up as little space as I can.
I am not worthy of the air around me.
You run hungry fingers through my hair and
watch as my eyes turn into pin holes.
I become glossed over magazine pages,
you try to touch me and feel nothing.
I blow in and out of consciousness like laundry on the line.
And you say something in desperation that I decide to not remember.
I look down at empty hands
and use them to snap the necks of the last fluttering promises
I cannot keep.
My body is a prayer
a tongue tied whisper
to a god I never believed in.
I am becoming your wasted breath.
I know this and do nothing.

Eventually, you will leave.
You will realize that you have done nothing to deserve this.
You can relieve yourself of this voluntary burden.
I am still wishing I could too.
I will feel a subtle gnawing in my chest
every time I hear your name.
But, this changes nothing.