When you forget how to remember
Or if you only ever held one memory at all,
Your stitches don't loosen--
They snap.
This perforated skin lets time drain out.
Today, I stayed home from school;
That's almost twenty absences.
I called in sick, but couldn't say from what.
I am ill from the violent entropy clogging my arteries.
With no time inside, all I can do is die from it
As it eats away at my work, and my life,
And my words, and relationships.
Time never allows sleep.
But time can't poison the thinker,
So I visit her every night and watch
As she shows me my potential.
She teaches communication and screens my mistakes--
A psych ward:
Unsettling and aggravating,
And teaching me how to cope.
But she is me, and like an organ,
She is only part of the whole.
And the connection dissolves
And I vomit
And still can't reverse the overdose
And empty out anxiety
And time never went away.
So, I detach and depersonalize and dissociate and derealize.
Can't imagine the future
With the past braiding phobia into my hair.
Scared of time
And how the numbers jump,
Scared by how my minutes match hours
And what that might mean.
I tremble when my mind reaches out it's hand, and I take it
Even when I know I'll let go.
Inside myself or inside reality,
I float
And nothing more.
Spoiler
um so... just because people never really fully know what my poems are about, this is about a mental illness called depersonalization disorder, which is a dissociation disorder (and yes, that includes multiple personalities but no, people who depersonalize don't have multiples). and a lot of time people with dpd lose perception of time and they get scared of depersonalizing again (and that usually causes them to do it again) because it's really anxiety provoking to see how much time goes by when it only felt like a few minutes. and ppl who also have this usually describe the experience as being disconnected from their body, observing it as if they were not part of it, observing their mental process (like in my poem), feeling invisible, not real, or like they are floating.
