deconstructing in your sighs

i
it’s not like they said it would be easy.

when you look at me
open-mouthed and dewey-eyed,
negligent; and your laughter
slurs together like runoff sewage,
and your voice is drowning in
a certain kind of sadness, the one
reserved for the faults
we never asked for; and you sigh,
heavy, like I am back sitting in
your throat between your adam’s apple
and the truths you dare not speak;

you pity me.

ii
it’s that very same weakness which
delivered me naked and trembling
into the skin of a person
I never was; pity

does not require action, disappointment
does not take away from the burning human need
to overcome oneself. I’m sick of living
tomorrow regretting the person I am today;
I drained her all out in a fit of desperation,
and filled myself through with vodka giggles
and scribbled lines and you, darling, you,

who fears nothing but the skeleton girl
sleeping quietly in your closet.