When I look at you, it's like the first time // When I look at you, I've seen the last of you

Have you ever looked at yourself in the 

mirror and you just can't recognize yourself?

Yeah, those are my eyes,

and my nose,

and my lips...

Physically, that is me. I see my body

unhindered.

But there is a phantom there nonetheless-

haunting what is supposed to be 

me. 

It's like I am here, with all of you

and I am laughing and telling the story of

that one time... Always "that one time."

There are thousands of "that one time stories" I tell 

you the way I want you to hear them

but never the way I want to tell them,

Yes, there's the facts but can you sense any of the emotion?

"But how did that make you feel?"

how did that make you feel?

Six words I've never heard

but six words I ask myself every day

A question I ask but I can never bring myself to answer.

A question so straightforward has become my archenemies

and something so simple has become so complicated. 

And maybe that's why I can't answer, or won't.

The answer may be easy, but the truth,

the truth is difficult. 

I don't know the exact words

or how to make you understand 

It's like I'm suffocating and my breathing is

getting harder and harder, heavier and heavier. 

I don't know if this is what it feels like to drown 

or get buried alive...

but maybe subtract the water and dirt

and replace it with words, and I could imagine

it is.

All of the words left unspoken

and silenced,

the phrases I've kept hidden in my locked chest filled with

secrets and lies

the sentences I've tried to deny to the world, to every astral plane,

and to the demons I've allowed to take residence inside my very core. 

I know there's such thing as a pill much too large to swallow, 

but nowhere in my mind did I know that silence fit the expression perfectly. 

And perfectly,

The words I could never utter- I've swallowed one too many.

And now my eyes stare bloodshot,

my nose breathe like that in a doldrums state,

and my lips purse blue and frozen.

Internally, everything is shutting down.

So yes, when I see myself in the mirror,

the figure is familiar but I do no not know

that reflection.

So when I look in the mirror,

I do not see me-

Instead, I see a visitor

overstaying a visit.

A visitor

longing nothing more

than a tranquil release back into

the current.