kenna-222

[kenna-222]

sometimes i clean my room with the righteous fury of a woman erasing all evidence of a man who wronged her

[kenna-222]

i occasionally walk around my room with a book in hand so i can feel like a misunderstood victorian child with a secret

[kenna-222]

a guilt incited

it isn’t something you notice at first. guilt sneaks in. especially when the thing you did wasn’t really a thing at all, just a series of small steps, none of which felt wrong at the time. i can try to rationalize it, surely others have done worse. i had my reasons. i didn’t mean harm. but guilt does not care, it does not negotiate. it doesn’t respond to logic. acknowledges no defense. i can go over everything in my head, try to pinpoint the exact moment things went wrong. i want a clear answer. i want to confess, maybe. but there’s nothing specific to say. and maybe that’s the most unbearable part—there is no clean wound to point at, no visible break. just a quiet corrosion. i keep thinking if i could just name it—just find the right shape for this thing—then maybe i could be rid of it. maybe confession would crack it open, drain it out. but it isn’t like that. there’s no great revelation waiting, no flood of forgiveness to wash it clean. instead, i am left with this dull persistence. the sense that I have failed something intangible. that i was trusted with something fragile and, without meaning to, i broke it.

[kenna-222]

i have felt the presence of your absence with a pressure as intense as the oceans deepest trenches. the strain that the privation of your being has brought me makes me question if i am just a dependent variable in a scientists experiment. with each day, they are increasing the pressure of the world around me, reminding me how insufferable the drought of you is. they are testing how long i can withstand the strain of your absence, your pressure. your existence was and is necessary to me. i wonder if this hurts so much more because i was never able to say goodbye to you. i wonder if i were to of had the opportunity to give you a proper farewell, if i were to have served you my beating heart, if i were to have cut myself open and let you see all of me, what if. what if my pleading would have been enough for you, if they were more than just futile efforts. maybe then you would have stayed. just maybe—something as simple as a goodbye would have changed our ending.

[kenna-222]

it is not like the movies. they fed us on little white lies. i have drowned myself in cheap wine as a means to find you again. i would drink just to feel the warmth travel down my throat and settle in my stomach. it provided me with a warmth only you have been able to bestow upon me. i buried my despondency in the palms of strangers. i met an army of men. some exactly like you, who would lumber along just as you do, who had the same mole underneath their eye. they resembled you so precisely it made me believe that God answered my prayers and sent you to me once again. but they were not you. they did not caress my shoulder like you did. they did not know to kiss my forehead with each goodbye. they could not have silent conversations with me using only our eyes. they did not know me, and they never tried to. they were not you.

[kenna-222]

you spoke, and the room collapsed inward. you did not notice—you never did. you said a thing and the weight of it settled into the marrow of my bones, and i carried it with me like a secret disease. you never noticed. you pressed your hand against the back of my head and called it a lesson. you told me that this is the way things are, and i believed you because there was no room to do otherwise.

i spoke, too. my words were small knives, deliberate and desperate, and i knew they would wound you but i couldn’t stop myself. i didn’t want to stop myself. i wanted you to know what it was like to hold something sharp in your hands. but you took the knife, turned it over, and didn’t even bleed. you stood in the wreckage of all your words, oblivious, waiting for me to apologize.

[kenna-222]

what about me are you drawn to? is it my eyes, the ones you told me were heavenly when kissed by the sun? is it my personality, the way i speak, the way i laugh, how i stay quiet when you talk? is it my age? do you like that i am young, pure & naive? do you crave the youth you see in me? are you attracted to the yet untainted disguise i wear? why is it that the only men i am not forced to rip my heart out and hold in my hands all bloody for, older? they yearn for me the same way i yearn for others. they have a hunger for me. their eyes watch me like i am prey. they tell me i am beautiful and like no other. i am something holy in their eyes. something to adore, something to worship—and i do not have to beg. but i am not naive. i know they do not crave me for my character. i know i am not any different from other girls. their desire is shallow and trivial. their attraction comes from my appearance, and most importantly, my age. they like my childlike disposition, the youth that clings to my skin.

they want to possess what they think i am, the image they project onto me. they want to see me fold, to prove i am another thing they can just consume. they do not care about me, they care about the version of me they can possess. they do not care to know the parts of me that matter, the parts that i guard, the parts i fear to show. they crave only the surface-the softness of my untouched skin, the allure of something young enough to bend, to break without resistance. i fit their fantasy of power, i fit into their palm like something fragile.

[kenna-222]

i like to be seen, to be watched with intent, to know that the eyes on me are tethered, that they do not drift. i like to feel wanted—not just in passing, but with hunger, by something with hands, something with teeth. hold me like a secret you are not allowed to tell. keep me like i am burning and you have always loved fire. i will change myself for you. i will be softer, sharper, smaller, more. i will be anything you can't let go of. tell me what you want and i will carve myself into it. i want to be wanted the way the ocean wants the shore-relentless, inevitable, cruel. i want someone to look at me and think: i could not bear it if she left. but people bear it. they always do

[kenna-222]

there is literally no arrangement of words that is capable of encapsulating the way i feel. no singular word either. yearning does not suffice. pleading does not do. paragraphs upon paragraphs describing my emotions in perfect detail cannot satisfy my minds hungry demands. my consciousness is a d1 yearner and she never fucking shuts up like omg please stop talking for one minute please you're driving me insane

[kenna-222]

i am WEAK. i am a puny, feeble, spent girl who is debilitated by her own mental psyche. i spend every waking moment writing shitty poetry about things that are entirely preventable. if i were to actually be present in my life and stop being so paralyzed in place i would be living such a lucrative life. yet, i am here once again spamming my notes app because i am in a writing mood (what’s new) and im feeling melancholy (what’s new) and i don’t know what to with myself. its as if in my constant arranging of words i expect to one day find the answer to this ambiguous question i am in continuous search for. but the reality is, there is no answer and there is no question. i will spend the rest of my life in search for something that does not exist. i will remain incapacitated at the grasp of my own mind. 

[kenna-222]

the sky is so bright i just want to yank it down from the sky. fistfuls of light tearing loose in my hands, burning through my skin like something holy, something unbearable. it blinds me, it hums in my teeth, it stretches too wide, too endless, too much. i want to drag it to the ground, press it into the dirt, watch it struggle under the weight of my wanting. i want to wrap it around my shoulders, crush it between my palms, make it small enough to hold, small enough to keep. but the sky does not belong to me. it stays where it is, shining, aching, untouchable. it watches as i reach for it, as i open my hands, as i let it go.

[kenna-222]

lay your sins before me and i will still choose you. break yourself open, and let me love you in all your jagged edges. let me know you. let me love you. i want to memorize every crypt and speckling in your eyes as though each mark is a secret. let me trace the lines on your palm and find meaning in them. let me pull apart your ribs and rest inside the hollow of your chest. let me press my ear to your lungs and listen for every word you have never said. in your silence, i will find the truth you cannot speak. expose me to the vulnerable parts of yourself. i will explore the darkest corners of you and i will breathe into those spaces. i want to see your fragility. your shame. i want to know you until i have traced every ache within you. i will hold them with reverence, not for pity, but because i crave to understand you. tell me all of your regrets, your mistakes, peel back the wall hiding all of your pain and let me hold onto it. i will not ask you to be anything other than what you are. i’ll run my fingers along your imperfections and with every touch rid you of your guilt. i will gather them in my hands and hold onto them, like something holy. something forgiven.

[kenna-222]

my entire life is built on stilts made of people i have pretended to be. each version of me is a false foundation, all created to keep the wind from knocking me over. i have stacked them so high that i cannot decipher where the foundation ends and the structure begins. there’s nothing real left. and if i stop pretending, there will be nothing left at all

[kenna-222]

i would let you hurt me a hundred times again, as long as it was you. there is a rhythm to it, there is order. the wound, the healing, the waiting, the wound again. a cycle so predictable it becomes its own kind of comfort.

i know the shape of your cruelty as well as i know your voice. the way it lingers before striking, the careful precision of it. you never hurt me by accident. i think that is why i keep coming back. there is something beautiful in knowing exactly how the pain will arrive, in recognizing its hands before they close around my throat.

the world beyond you is full of strangers and accidents. people who could destroy me carelessly, without ever meaning to. that kind of hurt is unbearable. but yours—yours is measured, deliberate. it has a purpose, even if i do not understand it.

so, if you must do it again, do it carefully. let me see it coming. let me love you in the moment before the blow lands. that will be enough.

[kenna-222]

when i was five, i was a small and certain thing. i knew the world in absolutes—good and bad, safe and dangerous, love and loneliness. i did not yet understand the in-betweens, the quiet sadnesses that settle in the corners of rooms, the way people leave without meaning to. i knew who i was because no one had yet told me otherwise.

at eight, i learned to doubt. the world became larger, more unpredictable, full of questions that had no answers. i traced the outlines of my own reflection, wondering if it belonged to me or if i had simply borrowed it. i was still myself, but now there were gaps, spaces where something had been taken or had not yet grown.

at eleven, the mirror became an enemy. my voice, my body, my thoughts—everything felt foreign, like i had been given the wrong set of instructions on how to be. i waited for something to click into place, for the feeling to pass, but it did not.

at thirteen, i became silence. i moved through the world carefully, afraid that speaking too loudly would make people look too closely. i folded in on myself like a letter never meant to be read. i wondered if there was a version of me that had never questioned, never hesitated, never shrank. i wanted to find her.

at sixteen, i looked for answers in other people, as if they might hold the missing pieces. i reached out, but my hands were empty. love, i thought, might be the thing that made me real, but love is an unsteady foundation, and i am still learning how to stand.

[kenna-222]

last night i dreamt i was buried alive, though it was not so different from waking. the dirt was warm and soft, pressing against my skin like a lover’s hand. i did not fight it. instead, i let it cover me, let it fill my mouth, my lungs, my heart. it was a relief to be swallowed, to become something that no longer needed. but morning came, as it always does, and i woke gasping, the hunger still gnawing at my ribs, the emptiness still curled beside me like a faithful dog.

[kenna-222]

i have written letters i will never send, each one more desperate than the last, each one pleading for the same thing in a different way: please, do not forget me. i suspect you already have. you move through the world unburdened, while i remain here, tethered to something that no longer exists. the clock on the wall ticks forward but refuses to bring me with it. time continues, unfeeling, as if i were never here at all.