The sun reaches it's fingers out to this hypothermic body

Soft and exploratory as they have never before met such frigid temperatures without evaporating in a cloud of steam.

A surprised gasp escapes cracked lips and tears trickle of their own volition down gaunt cheeks

Foreign warmth seeps into aching bones where their hands meet my flesh and I feel.

God, I feel.

I had forgotten that I could without a flash of unforgiving metal to guide it.

My smile is shaky, like a baby's first steps, I am learning once more but you hold my hand and nod in reassurance and so with each passing day my lips are more sure of themselves each time

I bare my teeth not as a dog desperate to protect itself but just simply to let out some of the excess joy that my body can no longer contain inside.

You look at me, seeing all of the scars inside me, and your eyes fill with such deep emotion that I couldn't possibly mistake it.

You hold me, and I do not break like I had always feared I might in daydreams.

I look in the mirror and I no longer see an amalgamation of others, but a growing, evolving shape of a unique person and my heart swells with love like it may just pop.

I give it to you and you cradle it like a cherished gift and never let it go.

A sea of millions and no one can hear my voice,

So many voices sound like a shrieking cacophony all at once saying "we don't want you here,"

A hive mind hurling daggers laced with the sharpest malice.

I don't want it to cut me, I wore chain mail.

Its never strong enough.

I am hemorrhaging on the dirty floor and they step on my body,

Cringing with disdain at the bloody mess on the bottoms of their pristine shoes that must have cost more than the sum of my entire life in one sole.

These pieces are no longer salvageable,

They are so much dust.

I have ground my bones into glue far too much for there to be enough left to reconstruct into the shape of a body this time.

Peering through this thick fog, I blink bleary eyes. There are shadows and shapes just out of my reach. My hands blindly search through the intangible vapor, so many evaporated and unshed tears that Alice herself would sail the world had they just been allowed to condense and fall. There are shades of deep, frigid blue that taint every surface further back than I am able to reach out and touch. A shaky breath in, and I reach further. Further into what feels like uncharted water, so blue it becomes black. Filled with unidentified creatures lurking just beyond the surface. My breath leaves my chest with a ragged hiss as my fingers slide against one now. It rears it's head up, looking up at me with such familiar eyes that I stumble back upon locking gazes, a shock wave zipping down my body from my skull all the way through each individual toe.

Suddenly I am screaming for help but every cry falls on deaf ears. Panic shakes my chest, vibrating my core and I throw my body against white padded walls. "Please, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please," spills repeatedly from my lips and I feel my face tingling and vision starting to periscope in and out. My nails claw desperately against my own skin, anything to prove that I am still real and I exist. Red weeps out around me. I tear pieces of my hair out to stitch my wounds up with. No one is coming. I am alone in this empty cage.

Every so often They come and remind me that I am bad. That this is my punishment. They force needles into my arms, slam me face down against the ground when I ask if I may see outside, then kiss my forehead. "This is because We love you."

I can't recall how long it has been now. I am hanging in the closet next to that fancy suit that is pulled out once a year on special occasions, small feet wedged into too large boots. I find myself wishing for the moths to munch on me next just to feel their fluttering against my skin. I am not pretty by the time I am next laid out on the bed. One last wear before I am in a box with the broken toaster and that old Christmas train that doesn't chug around the tree anymore. I am part of the isle of misfit toys now. A memory that no longer serves a purpose.

In my little black box I am not alone,

there are others here like me.

All I know is there is a competition,

to be the best,

to be the worst.

We play dress up with each other's flaws,

mixing and matching to gauge reactions. We learn never to trust another human, never let them see what is true

and what is an adopted front.

Never let them see weakness.

Trust is a mistake,

a chink in your carefully crafted armor,

a person meant to protect you

that has handed you scissors,

and words just as sharp.

They cut deeper and there are no stitches to mend the wound.

Trust is a walk to the window that ends in dislocation and a mouthful of dirty, dingy tile.

It is not the taste of tile I recall now, but the weight of those I trusted smearing me into it like a discarded cigarette.

Time heals, but what eternity can erase another?

Will I ever heal from such a vast expanse of pain?

A reality that very few understand,

unless they shared that same little black box with you.

I've bared a fragile part of my soul to you yet again-

How I wish I could take it back,

You do nothing but crush me.

How could I hope for anything different when that's all you've ever done?

Why do I continue to hope for more?

I am foolish.

You are the reason I will never trust a human being,

Including myself.

What is love but a fair weather feeling?

Where exactly is the line in the sand?

I lie when I say I have stopped crying for you,

I sob-

that same breaking child still,

Curled into a fetal ball.

I am a vast ocean of grief.

My fists connect with delicate skin,

Longing for rivers of red once more,

Yearning for the quiet stillness of a fading life.

Pain the only sobering familiarity left inside.

“Words hurt” a phrase that only ever applied to me.

When I think of all of the scars inside me, it is proof that you were right.

You said there was nothing I could do to make you stop loving me,

but if that were true as well then why did you leave me in a dark, lonely box and refuse to ever hear me when I cried for you?

7 years is a long time to spend in solitary.

A roof, food, clothing,

none of that makes a mother.

I have learned that, since taking your place.

I have learned all of the things that I would never do as a mother,

let alone as a person that cares about others.

You shattered me, and I was left with so many pieces.

I am still trying to make sense of them, some don’t seem to fit anywhere anymore.

I am forced to rebuild,

recover on my own while you continue your life as if nothing ever happened.

Faded words in an ancient book of your life.

I wonder if I was one of your pieces that just didn’t fit anymore.

I have long since stopped crying for you.

Sometimes I forget how it feels to be outside until I am there.

Suddenly the world is blurry, moving too fast, too many people’s gazes to avoid yet feel burrowing under your skin like maggots

Burrowing until your eyes glance, in the hopes of normal,

glance,

away,

too long!

There is a fine line between the endeavor to provide personhood, but not add to discomfort.

My settings burn so hot,

So cold,

No middle ground as hard as I try it feels so clumsy, like a toddler learning how to grip,

Bruisingly tight sometimes,

Falling open limply at others.

I want nothing more than to feel as if I am not an imposter,

An alien.

Everyone around me seems as if they are okay,

They do not struggle to control their vomiting when they are met with confrontation.

They do things, like get out of the car to pay for gas as if it’s not this looming threat of death.

I twitch,

My mouth smiles falsely,

I wonder if my eyes have blinked too much in the past few seconds.

I wonder if I look as fake to everyone else as I feel.

At home it falls away,

The existential, permeating dread.

Safe.

Warm.

But never for long, it isn’t mine to keep forever.

Soon I will know cold again, I will know the familiar grip of anxiety.

It is inevitable.

I think the cold always finds a way inside..

There is no true home, not a place in existence that my blood entitles me to,

My family,

My talents even.

The only comfort is found inside of a broken body that fails me often.

It is begrudging but I am trying to admit that I am strong,

That I am not failing if I am trying..

And I am trying. I have tried so damn hard.

These words are so disorganized,

but what part of me isn’t.

I have watched the world sprout around me from a barren wasteland.

My own growth stunted, I curled into a ball under a pile of leaves and watched them leave me behind. I was still so small, so scared. But outside circumstances leave no illusion of choice. Live or die.

If I were to lay down and let go, I would understand, yet everything that makes me up wanted to survive.

It’s like a parasite took over my brain,

A parasite that in turn gave everything a dismal hue.

Shadows filled in memories.

Limbs continue to masquerade, hinged on joints and pulled tight by veins.

Me, but not.

Me, except running on the singular notion that I *could* feel a feeling I hadn’t yet felt.

Looking back, I don’t know that I have ever felt it, even to this point.

And yet it is still my motivating factor.

The notion that my brain is not less than others.

Different, yes.

But that isn’t inherently less.

I have to be enough.

I have to step up where everyone else backed down, that is my duty to myself.

I was failed.

I am not a failure.

Not before my life is even over.

In the end, the unknown is scary.

And yet the unknown is the only constant. Change is constant.

We have to grow and shift as people, we were not meant to be held in glass boxes as delicate trinkets.

I am not a china doll.

This world will not break me.

I learned to hate the idea of being a woman.

Our only purpose seemed to be to serve, to submit, to be silent and suffer.

I watched as my mother cried and begged church after church for forgiveness for a crime she had no choice in commiting.

Knowing her story, her suffering,

intimately by age 9,

I had wept with her and could not fathom the cruelty and audacity of all of those pious, holy hypocrites to find joy in her desperate pleas.

I learned that I was not as good as my brothers, I was weaker, more emotional, better suited for cooking and cleaning and laundry than sports or video games or cars.

I learned that my voice should never be heard when there is a man present, that if a man chooses to give you attention, you should always be polite and sweet and thankful.

I learned that I would never be smart enough to understand the things in a man’s world.

I grew up with the notion that women like my mother and I are not pretty enough, we should be grateful for any man’s attention, because we have brown hair, brown eyes, baby bearing bodies and deep sadness that no one could ever deal with.

I had more body hair than most boys in my 5th grade class, I was too short, my hair was never blonde, my eyes weren’t blue, my stomach never once flat enough despite years of not eating and vomiting constantly- all of this kept as a tally of my exact degree of worth, or lack thereof, in the back of my brain.

I learned that I looked so similar to my mother through any eyes but her own.

She could only look at me and see her past regrets, now I look at me and I see a nauseating blur of two people that broke and abandoned me.

And so I burned the idea that I could ever be a woman to the ground.

I longed to be anything *but* a woman, hoping that would be enough for my father to care, to rewrite my past through a new lens, give me new worth, allow me to enjoy the things that he did even though I was not born with the same body as my brothers, but it turns out I will never be a man either.

There is nothing left that feels like mine except the in between shades of bluish gray.

The absent, gaping void settled betwixt here and there.

I do not belong to either world and I never will.

But I will forge my own place for my younger self to find safety and sanctuary in- even walking through the flames of the hell I’ve been damned to.

I am a phoenix.

Even if it takes lifetimes to rise from the ashes of generational grief.

I learned to hate the idea of being a woman.

Our only purpose seemed to be to serve, to submit, to be silent and suffer.

I watched as my mother cried and begged church after church for forgiveness for a crime she had no choice in commiting.

Knowing her story, her suffering,

intimately by age 9,

I had wept with her and could not fathom the cruelty and audacity of all of those pious, holy hypocrites to find joy in her desperate pleas.

I learned that I was not as good as my brothers, I was weaker, more emotional, better suited for cooking and cleaning and laundry than sports or video games or cars.

I learned that my voice should never be heard when there is a man present, that if a man chooses to give you attention, you should always be polite and sweet and thankful.

I learned that I would never be smart enough to understand the things in a man’s world.

I grew up with the notion that women like my mother and I are not pretty enough, we should be grateful for any man’s attention, because we have brown hair, brown eyes, baby bearing bodies and deep sadness that no one could ever deal with.

I had more body hair than most boys in my 5th grade class, I was too short, my hair was never blonde, my eyes weren’t blue, my stomach never once flat enough despite years of not eating and vomiting constantly- all of this kept as a tally of my exact degree of worth, or lack thereof, in the back of my brain.

I learned that I looked so similar to my mother through any eyes but her own.

She could only look at me and see her past regrets, now I look at me and I see a nauseating blur of two people that broke and abandoned me.

And so I burned the idea that I could ever be a woman to the ground.

I longed to be anything *but* a woman, hoping that would be enough for my father to care, to rewrite my past through a new lens, give me new worth, allow me to enjoy the things that he did even though I was not born with the same body as my brothers, but it turns out I will never be a man either.

There is nothing left that feels like mine except the in between shades of bluish gray.

The absent, gaping void settled betwixt here and there.

I do not belong to either world and I never will.

But I will forge my own place for my younger self to find safety and sanctuary in- even walking through the flames of the hell I’ve been damned to.

I am a phoenix.

Even if it takes lifetimes to rise from the ashes of generational grief.

I learned to hate the idea of being a woman.

Our only purpose seemed to be to serve, to submit, to be silent and suffer.

I watched as my mother cried and begged church after church for forgiveness for a crime she had no choice in commiting.

Knowing her story, her suffering,

intimately by age 9,

I had wept with her and could not fathom the cruelty and audacity of all of those pious, holy hypocrites to find joy in her desperate pleas.

I learned that I was not as good as my brothers, I was weaker, more emotional, better suited for cooking and cleaning and laundry than sports or video games or cars.

I learned that my voice should never be heard when there is a man present, that if a man chooses to give you attention, you should always be polite and sweet and thankful.

I learned that I would never be smart enough to understand the things in a man’s world.

I grew up with the notion that women like my mother and I are not pretty enough, we should be grateful for any man’s attention, because we have brown hair, brown eyes, baby bearing bodies and deep sadness that no one could ever deal with.

I had more body hair than most boys in my 5th grade class, I was too short, my hair was never blonde, my eyes weren’t blue, my stomach never once flat enough despite years of not eating and vomiting constantly- all of this kept as a tally of my exact degree of worth, or lack thereof, in the back of my brain.

I learned that I looked so similar to my mother through any eyes but her own.

She could only look at me and see her past regrets, now I look at me and I see a nauseating blur of two people that broke and abandoned me.

And so I burned the idea that I could ever be a woman to the ground.

I longed to be anything *but* a woman, hoping that would be enough for my father to care, to rewrite my past through a new lens, give me new worth, allow me to enjoy the things that he did even though I was not born with the same body as my brothers, but it turns out I will never be a man either.

There is nothing left that feels like mine except the in between shades of bluish gray.

The absent, gaping void settled betwixt here and there.

I do not belong to either world and I never will.

But I will forge my own place for my younger self to find safety and sanctuary in- even walking through the flames of the hell I’ve been damned to.

I am a phoenix.

Even if it takes lifetimes to rise from the ashes of generational grief.