if silence is safer than breath ( vent poem )

pmopmopmopmo—
the noise i hear before i fall asleep,
the noise i hear when i wake up.
maybe PTSD. maybe C-PTSD. maybe just me.
i don’t know anymore. i don’t want to know.
labels don’t change that my chest keeps caving in.

you tell me stop flirting. stop asking for hugs.
you said it once, Will,
and my brain wrote it in fire across the sky.
so now Vinne doesn’t exist.
better she be a ghost than i get crucified for breathing wrong.
if pretending she isn’t real makes you shut up,
then fine. she isn’t real. she’s erased.
and i carry the guilt in my teeth every day
because i know she’s real.
i know i erased her anyway.

and maybe that’s my role, right?
to erase.
myself.
others.
the parts of me that don’t fit.
the names that aren’t mine but stick like rot.
the pronouns that gut me but i still swallow down.
erase until all that’s left is
“wrong.”

it’s wrong when i kick.
right when they kick.
wrong when i breathe.
right when they choke me with silence.
wrong when i hold on to trauma.
right when they sink into theirs.
wrong when i stay.
right when they leave.
wrong when i ghost.
right when i disappear.

i scolded Cobbler.
“leave me alone.”
he only wanted what i wanted:
to be loved, to be understood.
i should’ve held him like i wanted to be held.
instead i shoved him off,
because i am out of hands.
because i am out of heart.
because i am tired of being used as a mirror for everyone else’s brokenness.
but he was broken too.
and i understood him.
and i still said go.
so now i carry him like another ghost.

pmopmopmopmo—
the static between thoughts.
wrongwrongwrongwrong.
if i said this out loud,
you’d grind me into the dirt,
call me liar, manipulator, abuser.
so i write instead.
because the page doesn’t argue.
because here at least,
i can say it.

—Roary (not Jatzi**, not “she.” stop calling me what i’m not.)