My favorite picture of my father is his mugshot. He didn't get to choose whether or not it was taken, and that "how dare you" expression is carved so deeply into his forehead wrinkles. For once he's being held accountable for his actions even though he claims the accusations are false. When he can't deny that something happened he's got an arsenal of excuses to use as evidence of his innocence.

Like earth and and air and toast...but more, the smell calls you from across years and through tv screens. Screaming to not be fogotten. It's so easy easy easy to fall back in. Just touch the paper and feel how smooth and warm, it fits. Your mind can see nothing else, angry that it won't go away. The sensations are seared into the fleshy layers of your weak brain, smoke soothing and sifting into the walls of your lungs, stop thinking and breathe, again and again.

Pinned to the table like a moth in the back of the biology lab, dried out and older than most of the professors. Small pieces flake away when the shelves rattle, but I don't care. My face crawls like a million ants are eating their way inwards, and these shallow breaths are useless. I have no power, it has been taken from me with one needle after another, my body no longer is allowed its purpose. But somehow, as they cut through my flesh, you are here, and I hear your scream pierce the air. There is nothing else.

What do you see? Do you hear? Do you feel?

I feel nothing, and then everything. I am a cold and silent tomb deep in the earth.

I am a thousand voices screaming to be heard simultaneously.

Do I even exist? Can you see me? When my lips move do words come out? Do they make sense? Do the words I form in my mind take hold in reality, or does your blank expression point to the truth of it? Do the words I speak and the words you hear meet and mirror? or is there a vast chasm that no sentence can bridge.

Title: Do You See

Genre: Poetry

Age range: 18 and up

I've been writing poetry for a long time. I'd love to know how the public would receive my work, but would like to use a pen name if I ever published anything. I write about mental health a lot, as it's the field I'm pursuing career wise. It's not always sunshine and rainbows.

What do you see? Do you hear? Do you feel?

I feel nothing, and then everything. I am a cold and silent tomb deep in the earth.

I am a thousand voices screaming to be heard simultaneously.

Do I even exist? Can you see me? When my lips move do words come out? Do they make sense? Do the words I form in my mind take hold in reality, or does your blank expression point to the truth of it? Do the words I speak and the words you hear meet and mirror? or is there a vast chasm that no sentence can bridge.

It is dangerous to love something too much. When you put too much of yourself into loving someone, you will lose that part of yourself when they are taken away. Death is absolute, a door closed and locked for eternity. As a part of you leaves with someone else, you remain tethered to the life left behind, but not whole. Now you must fill the remaining emptiness with whatever you can so you can keep breathing, keep moving, act normal.

Wear many layers,

To protect myself from you,

Hiding in the darkness.

Into each moment,

You are inserting yourself,

Your poison spreading.

The sweetest disguise,

Containing such a madness,

Keep you in my heart.

Drowning in despair,

A self made monotony,

But to revel in.

Leave you all to rot in the dust,

But cometh your need, return I must.