Girl in my head is unwell
A poem by Sean Kathryn Bratton
This girl in my head is unwell, she doesn’t know when to stop. This girl in my head might be the death of me, she holds me hostage ‘til I pop.
Let me up for air, I’m slowly drowning. Let me out of this burning house, I’m violently melting.
I take her everywhere with me, like a picture in a locket. Yet she finds her way out, liberates her pain and then tells me to stop it.
She’s like an evil step sister, a shadow attached to my heel. I’ve tried to befriend her but her misery is made of steel.
She’s moody and longing, she’s never satisfied. She doesn’t want to be here, she doesn’t appreciate being alive.
She whispers in my ear, “I want to go home” while crying in my bathroom floor all alone. She roams the halls, haunts the neighbors. She’s naked in the yard, sun gazing with the invaders. She won’t leave my house, she won’t answer the door. I ask her if she’s okay, and she starts sobbing up a storm.
She antagonizes the pain, I think she likes to feel this way. I think she knows too much and the mystery is out of touch. Her joy and her pain connect, can’t she just cut the cord? Maybe this is who she is, maybe she should just be adored. It’s a skill to find pleasure amongst your pain, it’s a skill to get up and live, every single fucking day.
So, she stays and she lingers, God knows when she’ll leave. One thing I know for sure, she’ll find her way back to me.
