A/N: I was thinking about what I think makes me flawless, and I think it's my intense survival instinct. So here's a poem about that.

 

I spend my life in a constant state of drowning

of kicking

of screaming

 

it did not begin

in the bathtub

but it may end there

 

whenever I turn on the faucet

I feel the urge to finish it

to let the water run until it floods the bathroom

leaving me shriveled underneath its power,

body pruny

body lifeless

 

I was born

to be the girl who stops the water

who stays solid

under the pressure

 

but my lungs

are filling up

up

up

 

and my heart

is slowing down

down

down

 

I feel myself sinking

but the harder I try to get up,

the more it hurts when I fall back down again

 

people keep insisting that there’s a statute of limitations to my suffering

and I find myself believing them

 

but every time I reach the surface the water gets deeper

and every time I think I’ve escaped her

or him

they find a way to pull me back in again

 

I spend my life

cleaning up the messes that others have left me with

from alcoholism to pedophilia to addiction to eviction

I’m clawing to the surface of the ocean I've grown accustomed to living in

 

and I don’t know

how much more

I can

take

 

but this poem

is

not

a suicide note

 

because I

am the girl

who stops the water

 

I am the girl who kicks

who screams

who lets every gasped breath of fresh air sustain her for days

weeks

months

a lifetime

 

because here

I have hope

but the other place is oblivion

here

I have huffs

and puffs

and the small breaths I force in every now and again

 

and there

I have nothing

 

I am the girl who won’t stop screaming

who will fight to get up every morning

when every muscle in her body is begging her not to

 

It's my job to be

the calm woman in a storm

because when my friends are weak

they depend on me to be strong

 

it’s my job

to stop the water

it’s my job

to keep breathing

 

it’s my job

to be the broken thing that keeps functioning

 

I

am the cracked iPhone screen you can type on

the dingy laptop you’ve never brought to tech support

the car from the 60s that just

keeps

on

trucking

 

I

am the girl who stops the water

 

I

am the girl who burns as bright as the sun

 

my skin

is fire

 

I will cause evaporation

burn

until there’s nothing left to drown in

 

and the air

will be humid

and the water

will stick to my skin

and someday

the vapor will condense

and it will rain again

 

but I

am the girl who stops the water

and it is my job

to do more

than stay afloat