I have a confession to make:

I still sleep with the lights on.

I know it is silly to keep stitching

this childish fear into my brain,

but I have this strange way of overthinking things:

like the shadows in my room and how they stretch across

my blackened floor like blood in a crime scene.

I do the same thing with you.

Like, maybe if I wait long enough,

the monsters will unzip themselves from your skin

and will finally feast on my leather flesh

and pick their teeth with my ribs.

I think I saw them the other day,

or perhaps, I am just looking in the mirror again.

Maybe I am staring at the reflection of the girl I used to be,

letting my collection of suppressed memories tie strings around my feelings

as if they had to right to tell me who I spend my time loving.

For a while, it was never myself.

It is 11:59 and the moon is saturating my thoughts with a burning illumination

as they slowly teeter-totter between what happened today

and what could happen tomorrow.

Do you still care?

Did I breathe the wrong words?

Is it love if I hurt?

Throwback to those cold Autumn nights of us sitting in your car.

You kissed me, and suddenly, I am thrown into a flashback.

You grasp my hand and for a second,

it looked like you were reaching for the door handle.

You’re fingers molded with mine

and my eyes look like I have just seen a ghost.

I told you that I over-analyze things;

that I have the ability to take a stray drop from a water faucet,

turn it into an ocean,

and drown myself in it.

You keep telling me that there is no issue

unless I know I did something wrong,

but my father always taught me that

I was the problem by merely existing.

Funny how I can cut everyone off except my feelings;

that includes the ones I hold for you.

You are tantalizingly addicting.

Your breath seduces my lungs and your soft lips set mine ablaze.

I think I am finally getting used to the flames.

Falling for you feels like falling into a casket,

so lay with me in this premature burial.

We can sink into the earth together and grow beautiful things.

I have learned that rebirth follows death,

so if I have to kill the memories that feed my anxiety disorder,

I am not afraid of committing mass murder.

It’s been a few weeks since I have recited late-night

horror stories of the monsters that broke me.

You’ve got me thinking about the people I have

and forgetting the ones I have lost.

And now, because of you,

I’m finally sleeping with the lights off.