t h e s t a y
if only you understood the lashes of darkening gray on the crumbling walls of my mind and the blues and reds it has taken to come so far. if only you knew how much residual pink there is under my tongue, like medicine long forgotten just for show. if only you’d stop looking past me and instead, really see the scarring white glistening on this skin, like ghosts of survivors, of wars fought for too long.
