Sinking in the Marrow

My skin feels like it’s two sizes too small,

stretched tight over all this junk I’ve been hoarding.

I thought if I just kept moving,

kept busy, kept the pen scratching across the paper,

I could outrun the drag of it.

But the body keeps score.

It stores the grief in the knots behind my shoulder blades,

and the guilt settles in my stomach like lead,

hard, cold, and impossible to digest.

There’s a heat that flares up behind my eyes,

that’s the rage, I think..

trying to burn a hole through the armor I’ve built.

Then there’s the fear,

that thin, vibrating wire under my ribs,

telling me that one wrong move

will bring the whole structure down.

And love? It’s not soft.

It’s a jagged thing that takes up space,

a heavy, thumping rhythm that demands to be fed

even when I am starving.

Even the end of things,

the way everything drifts toward loss,

it’s all parked in my marrow.

I have been acting like a pack mule,

shouldering the weight of every bad day,

every regret, every 'what if' I ever tucked away.

I am tired of pretending that this much grit

doesn't wear a person down to nothing.

I look at my hands, they’re shaking,

and I realize I have been trying to build a fortress

out of the very things that are destroying me.

I want to dump it all,

let it hit the floor with a mess,

a scattered heap of all the things I was too scared to name,

and just stand there, empty,

for the first time in years.

-dmnd