left them downstairs

i'm sick of feeling this
i thought i was over it.
it's come down to:
given the chance, i'd go back
take it back...
-become what i hate
in order to heal.

i'd be decomposing everyday
happily.
my skin would shed in layers,
i'd be exposed to the cold
naked to the eye
but not to the naked eye
and i'd shiver in shame
but boil beneath tender muscle.
emotional-physical mess,
put myself down
thoughts construed and pointless,
unhappy,
yet my heart on a pedestal
beating erratically for
you.

he is utterly beautiful.
his eyes crescents as he looks up
into top eyelashes, at me
they glimmer in the soft glow of the
static television and for that moment
i wish he was
all mine
for i know she will never
care for him like i know i can.
he is pursuing a lost cause,
a heartbreaking unsatisfiable banshee
-words i could never speak to him.
my care, my want
it is born from places unknown
hidden from view, hidden from brain synapses.
he isn't the source of my pain
but he looks like my captor
and perhaps that is the sole reason.

i wouldn't say i'm still in love
but memories keep me grounded
and destroy the muscle keeping me alive
constricts airway passages
and tricks my brain into:
suffocation, arrhythmias
stomaches bottoming out and
bottom-of-a-long-dark-well
feelings.

i thought i was okay
but that's clearly not the case