Helpless again- bodies crowded in a small place. All taking breaths at different times makes it feel like there isn’t enough air in the room. Helping me learn how to not suffocate, but you fell in love with the process. Admiring the way I respond to lungs finally filling with air. Begging me to fucking breath for once in my life, just breath- you keeping screaming for me to breath. Now I skip over three towns and two highway exists just to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the thought of you. And even though a part of me is dead to you, then Why are you bringing flowers to my funeral? Never mind, they’re just weeds. . I’m soaking into the seams of my couch and the nighttime is growing faster over my skin like a shadow. Let the sad things marinate because I no longer need help digging myself out. Act like it never happened. Run away. What if I just ran away? I’m so fucking tempted to run far away. Find what makes me whole again. I’m scattered across this place like seeds- except I don’t ever end up rooting myself. I let the rain wash me away again and again and again until I slip through a crack in the cement and become a dandelion. I’m not a weed. I’m a living thing. It doesn’t matter how high my stems grow, it’s the fact that they’re growing and being. This is the part where everyone else tries to speak. Tries to tell me that weeds don’t deserve to grow. Tries to tell me that breathing is an art- and if you do it right then you’ll live forever. I’d never want such a thing. Take the long way home. Always the long way. Let the long way bring me back to where I’m supposed to be, even though I feel helpless again. -AMT