Beautifully Broken Glass

I was barefoot in the kitchen where the bottle confessed,
Glass everywhere like the truth undressed,
Labels peeled off, soaking wet in regret,
Every name you gave me still breathing on my neck.
I didn’t flinch.
I let the shards flirt with my skin,
Let pain whisper, remember who you’ve been,
Brown body, bad data, misread again,
You never studied the system—just blamed the specimen.
I was a hypothesis you wanted to fail,
Too loud, too wet, too feral, too real,
You said alcoholic like a moral crime,
But called it stress when it looked more like mine.
You wanted me drunk enough to be touchable,
Numb enough to be controllable,
Sexy but silent, dangerous but tame,
Desired in private, erased in your name.
Alcohol kissed me like a sinner’s prayer,
Tongue slick with promises, fingers in my hair,
Dopamine dripping like a late-night sin,
Said one more swallow and you won’t feel a thing.
Blackouts stole time like a jealous lover,
Stole my voice, stole nights I can’t recover,
Hangovers came like punishment, mean and slow,
My body screaming what my mouth couldn’t say though.
My amygdala stayed horny for danger,
Cortisol moaning fight me, save her,
Nervous system wired like a live grenade,
You called it unstable—I called it I stayed.
I drank to disappear,
To soften the stare,
To survive being wanted
But never cared for.
Then sobriety walked in
Bare-knuckled and slow,
Undressed me completely, said now you know,
Clarity felt obscene on my tongue,
Like waking up wet after years numb.
Being awake is filthy when you’ve lived asleep,
When your body comes back raw and deep,
I saw who needed me sloppy and small,
Who loved me blurry but feared me whole.
I took your labels and broke them down,
Ground them into glass, spread them on the ground,
Identity sharp, desire obscene,
Anger humming low and gasoline clean.
Walking on shards ain’t bravery—it’s skill,
You relax your body or you bleed for the thrill,
Tension gets you cut, panic gets you torn,
Control is learned when you’re reborn.
Pressure makes propulsion, friction makes flame,
Impact turns trauma into something untamed,
I didn’t heal pretty, didn’t come back polite,
I came back edged, calibrated, right.
Don’t ask me to put myself back together,
I was never built for your neat little measure,
I’m not cracked porcelain, not broken glass art,
I’m a mosaic made of teeth and heart.
No gold in my seams, no lie in my shine,
Just memory, data, and rage refined,
I don’t reflect you—I split your view,
Prism energy, bend the truth through you.
The glass is mine now.
Every cut. Every name.
Every night I survived
By setting myself aflame.
I’m not your experiment under white light fear,
I’m the researcher whispering come closer, dear,
I wrote the study, rewired the frame,
I am the outcome you couldn’t name.
And if standing this close makes your comfort crack—
That’s not my damage.
That’s your body
Realizing
It can’t go back.