Pull String In Case of Emergency

I’m a mass grave of a million parts, none of them mine. I am a strangled skeleton of angst and scars. And once. I think I was mine. Then they scrawled their ink across my bones. Used as the well to pour their stories into. Used as the paperweight to hold down their pain. The halfway house that keeps them warmed and fed. I’m the undertaker, cleaning the mess out of their insides. I’m the wrists they cut when the darkness insisted it be bled. And I’m the leech that sucked out the emotions that were bursting from their straight jacket bodies. The veins where they stuck their needles, dirty and diseased, once the sharps box had been filled. And the carpet that soaked up the inside of all the broken bottles. I’m the gutter that helps the flood down off the roof just before it jumps. And the ladder they used to climb back to the top. They asked me to carry it all. And suddenly it was mine. Or maybe I was theirs. But once. I think I was mine.