Step one:
Kneel.
Not like one would in prayer or like a knight,
but because it's how you've learned to keep yourself small.
Maybe if you fold yourself just right,
they'll stop questioning why you're not enough.

Step two:
Take the laces,
expectations, both yours and theirs.
Cross them over like your dreams running head-first into a wall.
Pull tight. Tighter,
until you feel the constriction in your throat.

Step three:
Make a loop.
Make another.
Remember, this is how it's supposed to go.
Twist. Thread. Pull.
Do it again and again because one knot is never enough
to hold yourself together the way they want you to be.

Step four:
Let go.
Not because it feels done, but because it has to be.

You bleed over my lashes, blurring my vision.
I see only what you let me.  
Is there an escape, or is this all I've ever known?

You slick down my skin, coiling around my neck.
Heavy and gilded, you press and press.
My pulse hammers against your walls.
How do I breathe when every inhale feels like suffocation?

You seal my lips like an amber muzzle,
gluing my tongue to silence.
I scream, but my voice dissolves into you.
Do you hear me, or is my silence sweeter?

You creep over my limbs like vines,
dragging me under and I am clothed in your ruin.
I claw at the surface but my fingers slip.
You fill my lungs and run through my veins,
flooding me with no resistance.

I let you take me, let you coat my ribs.
Merged with you, will I ever be free?

Was I ever mine to begin with?

Show me you care,

So I don't have to press my fingers against my throat
To feel the pulse of something real to remind myself,
"I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive,"

And not just a shadow cast in the shape of you.