Lost Ravager

I am the one ravaged

Everything is shallow
My body left behind to waste in pools of
Toxic waste, like, love I’ve never really had
I wish I was dead

It’s this phrase that holds my body up the way bones should
I wish I was dead, instead of
Breathing

I am both haunted and the thing that is haunting
The poltergeist in the background of the movie until
The main cast finds a way to banish it
Downward

There are entire days I spend above myself
With people who could never wade in the swamps I inhabit, and
I never want them to have to

I am swamp monster
Made of vines and faceless
I am in pain and always growing
An abomination I am also in the crowd that’s hunting it

Like,
Pitchforks and torches and braving the night
No fear of death or gators or the black magic that waits inside of lily pads
Sure we’ll kill the thing we were sure was hunting us first, but

Maybe I only dreamed it
Maybe I was never lurking under my own bed, or
Creaking invisible in the hallway
Maybe all of me was always in the mirror

Baying at the moon
Begging for my freedom
It’s been so long I forgot I laid the trap that caged it

I snared myself inside of pallid skin
Caught myself in branches
Not the first to run from the monster, but
The one that brought the rest

Endless cycles,
I mean circles, or
Cycles of non -belonging
They lead me back to death

Icy cool and patient
He waits in my periphery
Beckoning me closer
My toes are already at the shoreline

What a thing it is to feel nothing and everything all at once
It gives eye of the storm, or
Maybe just depression, or
Maybe something else less understood

I wish I was dead, or
I’m just tired of living this way
Static and non -moving the way video games loop on a paused screen
My emotions run on high at all times, and

It’s not that I forgot to turn the dial down