Survivor? Victor.

Of words spoken too soon,

Of words never said at all,

Of doing too much,
Of not doing enough,
Of being too cautious,
Of being too spontaneous,
Of waiting too long,

Of not waiting long enough, 

Of swallowing the feeling,

Of being swallowed by the feeling,

Of smells you can't forget,

Of smells you don’t remember,

Of the panic when you hear a certain word,

Of the pain when you don’t, 

Of daydreams that make you dizzy,

Of dreams that became nightmares,

Of the frozen feet at a certain sight,

Of the midnight run to numb the flashbacks,

Of the lump in your chest,

Of the cold fingertips in a fist,

Of the breathlessness from sitting still,

Of suffocating from too much wind,

You are, all of it.

Of everything you have ever and never felt,

You are.

Yet here you still are.

Here you still are.

Cowardice

"You misunderstood me", she whispered to the receding shadow, of you walking away.

What was for you an excuse, granting you the freedom you didn't have the courage to ask for, was her reason to live shackled with guilt for years to come.

Unrequited, alternately

He did

She couldn't 

He did
She shouldn't
He stopped
She did
He couldn't.

Adulthood

Freshly off the rocky boat that brought you across the sea they call Teenage
The jacket of invincibility fits a size too small suddenly
This new island they call Adulthood is your home now
The rules of land are different from the sea they warn upon arrival
But no one tells you what the new rules are
The first steps on the shore are hard after spending years at sea
You falter, stumble, fall and scratch your skin
The jacket tears apart, ripping at the helms
While you struggle to find foothold on the soft sand
Passersby whisper about how you walk weird
But no one gives you a hand
You see some struggling too, but some others seem so sure
"Experience!", a fellow struggler tells you following your eyes
Eventually the walk gets easier, but just when you find your foothold,
The landscape changes, and they tell you, you gotta keep walking
It's a marshland now, and again the faltering ensues
But it has been a few years on this island already
And you know that there's no escaping it
So you learn to make peace with the idea of this new home
You still are not sure when the landscape will change again
But you know as long as you own your fragility you will be fine
As long as you accept that you're breakable, you will be able to fix yourself
The knowledge is empowering, yet some nights
When it gets a bit too cold here on this island
You miss that jacket, the jacket of invincibility that fell apart at the shore
The waves have probably taken it back and fixed it, you think
And it is keeping some other kid at the sea warm now
And you hope they take care of it
You hope they know its not theirs to keep forever.

Why I didn't laugh...

I don’t blame you

I really don’t

I am not angry at you

I am really not

You didn’t hurt me

You really didn’t

But when you made that joke

That joke that you had made

A hundred times before

And I had laughed

A hundred times before

Because I thought it was funny

I really did

Only this time I didn’t laugh

And it wasn’t your fault

Just that your joke

Sounded eerily similar

To the voices in my head

That I had silenced

A hundred times before

At 3 AMs, 2 PMs

At 7 PMs, 10 AMs

The voices that I had

Refused victory to 

A hundred times before

Lately they were getting louder

And when you made that joke

The voices laughed in my stead

And I couldn’t silence 

The deafening sound

And I couldn’t laugh over them

Even though I tried

I really couldn’t.