Osmosis

My brother and I
used to walk on the beach.

We’d step from rock to rock and
end up far out in the ocean.

He’d always climb down
and let the water lick his pants.
I’d look at him with groundless terror
masked as judgment and he’d say
What? We’ll get wet anyway.

I’d always end up in the water,
wet socks and pants, Mom would scold,
but I always acted like this time I wouldn’t.
I knew it would happen, but I never let it,
and when water crept through my shoes
I’d cry for being such a fool, for letting it.

Osmosis be damned, it was my fault
for not trying harder.

~~~

Half of my sleeping nights I
dream it all and don’t exist when
I wake up. The other half is empty
and then I dream with my eyes open.

I have this dream sometimes where
all my friends line up and offer me
death. I ask them if they want me to

and their smiles crack and hang sideways
like a nicotine-addict’s when they take
out a cigarette, the I know I shouldn’t.
But I am.

Like my mom’s best friend who smoked in
the garage, pretended she wasn’t, until
I finally got to asking why it smelt like
smoke. After that

she’d take my mom out to the garage
and she’d give me that smile,
that I know, I shouldn’t, but I have to
smile, but she didn’t lie to me anymore.

And my friends look at me with that
could-shouldn’t-will smile all cracked
and empty, their hands cupping death
and I ask

really?

And they just keep smiling.

And the ache starts inside me, but I never
take what I am offered. I apologize but they
already hate me, and their smiles fall off
and lie cracked and chipped on the floor.

~~~

I’d smell like smoke when we got home,
and I sit in the backseat and say mommy?
mommy I stink and she’d say I know,
I know, but that’s what it is.

I used to pretend the smell couldn’t
get me, not if I pretended, but it always did.

I pretended the smell couldn’t get me
the way I pretended the blood couldn’t
when I held my cat dead and bleeding,
not if I tried, osmosis be damned.

Pretended it couldn’t the way sadness couldn’t
if I was strong, tried hard enough.

I’m not strong, I’m pretending
because maybe if I am
I don’t have to hate myself the way I do.

~~~

I fight smoke and I fight blood
and I’ve fought the whole of the Pacific Ocean.

I’ve lost every battle and so when you say
don’t let depression get you, keep fighting,
I want to tell you that’s stupid.

I want to tell you that I have an anxiety
disorder, and disorder means there is
something wrong, something bad, and
I’m scared all the time, I’m worried always,
always, I worry like you breathe,
and when you say keep trying to fight
I want to say I’m fighting every day
is it so wrong to want to stop.

~~~

I woke up in my dorm bed in college
where no one knew me, on a hall where
no one cared because I was new,
new and scared, scared and silent.

I woke up still shaking with my
fist balled tight around cracked smiles
of friends who asked me to die
and I stood at the window with no screen
and asked myself if I wanted what they did.

And I didn’t say

yes,

but I didn’t say

no.

I just said

this is not how it ends.

~~~

I’m fighting every day, and
I don’t want to, but in the end
it’s the only thing I know how to do.

It’s the only thing left,
so of course I’m going to keep fighting.

Negativity be darned,
osmosis be damned.