familiar

it’s a familiar smell,

the sharp sobering scent

of mucus and tears

mingling like lost friends,

an amalgam of agony.

it’s a familiar taste,

the brackish bitterness

of each tear as it

traces its zigzag

path down my cheek.

it’s a familiar sound,

the gasping and the choking,

the strangled, mournful cries,

desperate palpitating of

my frantic heaving heart.

it’s a familiar thought,

tell myself it doesn’t matter,

tell myself to calm down.

slow quivering breaths;

succumb to the silence.

it’s a familiar feeling,

the hollowness, the emptiness,

the comfort of nothing,

that when it isn’t barren,

when a touch of

perceivable emotion is there,

it doesn’t feel right.

it’s too full,

too big,

brimming at the edges

and threatening to spill over.

so I push it away,

relish in the

biting hollowness

as it eats away at me,

eroding what

little is left.

it’s a familiar feeling…