myselves

myselves We tried to drink ourselves clean, counted shots like rosary beads, the glass sweating. We tried to smoke ourselves sober , ash collecting like dried petals beneath forgotten flowers. We tried to peel back our masks, And found scabs like punctuation marks interrupting every sentence the body tries to finish. I told myself: stop. I told myself: just one more. All the voices sounded like me. Our hair became the string we followed, trying to escape our labyrinth mind. We pulled, and we unraveled, and escape remained unknown. Call us user, abuser, monster, maniac; names stack like chairs in an empty room. We sit in all of them. None can bear our weight. We tried to divide ourselves evenly one voice for rage, one voice for hunger, one voice that only knows how to stay. But the body refuses fractions. It gathers us back together until there is only one mouth left and it is screaming.