My memories of myself are faded like old pictures found in an attic, sticking together from the heat and the neglect of a mind not often home

Many are shrouded in black, with scratches and runs all over their surfaces from angry nights spent staring at the darkness and begging to know why they won’t leave

Some are worn smooth and hard from rolling around in other people’s mouths as they remind me who they think I am

but they only see the faces I show them, as I layer mask over mask to look like what they want me to be,  and they spit those pebbles of the past at my face and they wait to see if I bruise or not.

I hide behind the walls I built for myself brick by guilt-ridden brick, with excuses as my grout and a self-hating hand to tap each part of myself into place. I wait for the sky to fall and part of me hopes that these walls will collapse, but I pray they remain all the same just so the years I spent working would be for something.

They say I’m going to be someone, that I’ve got potential flowing through me like quicksilver and a mind so sharp it will cut you to the core, and they might be right.

But there is a world of heartache and misery staring down at me as I channel my inner atlas and try to raise everything up while I’m drowning myself, built to be the one who takes responsibility for all the horrors of the world and bottle up all the guilt and shame so no one else has to swallow the bitter contents.

I’m dying so much faster than I should be, I’ve got the dust of the dead in my joints and the salt crust of so many wet eyes worn from crying on my skin, plants twist and twine up to greet me as I fall flat into my eternal six feet,

They expect so much from a decaying body, To function and succeed and excel; it’s hard to focus on meeting expectations when you feel like you’re rotting from the inside out.

The world is being held up by not much at all anymore, I was decomposing too quickly and painfully and selfishness demanded I save what little I have left and make room for the next cursed soul to hoist the weight of this plagued human planet.