Skin

I am a glass bowl.
My goldfish heart
needs to be reminded
every five seconds
of who it really is
and more often than
not, I just swim
around in circles
trying to figure out
how and when I drowned.
But I keep sinking
and rock bottom keeps
pulling away from me
and I miss the feel
of solid ground beneath
my feet and my mother
once told me that
falling is just another
form of flying so I have
made a home of this
chronic descent.
I am the product of
everything that has ever
brought me to my knees.
I am the product of
decades’ worth of scraped
skin and I know I have
made my own bed and I
know that the polite thing
to do is to just
lay in it but I swear
that I have forgotten
how to lay still.
Teach me
to remember.
Teach me
to open my hands because
I’ve closed them off
for so long that I
have even forgotten how
to hold myself.
But understand:
I am neither  unbreakable
nor fragile.
I am all these
stories trying to claw
their way out of skin
and I will not rest
until I’ve spoken.
Understand:
I am restless, reader.
Understand:
this isn’t art or beauty,
what I do to myself on a
daily basis, and this is neither
joy nor sadness, what you
see on my face, but I will
breathe in this
water and quietly will it
to seep out of my fingers
in ink because my goldfish
heart has lived too many
lives in a lifetime and
all I’m left with are
these stories so
understand me when I say:
I am learning to breathe
unconventionally. My
pen is cutting gills through
my skin. I am learning to
breathe and I am teaching
myself resilience.
I am a glass bowl and
today my heart
is a goldfish, but I am
working on it becoming
that ray of light reflecting
colours on the walls
of my chest, and reader;
I promise that one day,
I will get there.