Sixteen (v.2).

I’m sixteen; you’re twenty-three,
and you still don’t want to hear
from me, even for a moment,
even though you promised this
would no longer be the case.

All those Hallmark dramas you
ate up, declaring “triumph of
the human spirit” but you still
want your triumphant history erased,
replaced with something more
in keeping with who you’d like
yourself to be. I am no one
that you would have chosen,
although you’ve grown from me.
You’ve grown into a girl who doesn’t
mean me when she says my name.

Now, you use different evidence
to build the same silence that nearly
suffocated me when you were
my age. (Where would you be,
by the way, if you’d succeeded then?
And do you really think it makes
a difference that your argument
has changed? That it’s no longer
“monster/ poison/ worthless/ pain”
but “unnecessary history” or “harmful
past”?) You think you’ll barricade
me in at last, keep me comfortably
distant, mention me in passing
if you mention me at all?

I crawled my way over mountains
to give you a chance. I slipped
off cliffs and hung by my hangnails
off the edges. I gave everything
to you, by not giving up, and you
still don’t want me to exist.

How are you better than the
voice of this illness? To me?
I went through hell because
I thought I could free both of us,
the future and the history,
reclaimed, but you only offer me
the same old lines, the constant
shame. Not good enough, a danger.
You look my way and squint,
like I am overly harsh sunlight,
like I burn.

I gave myself to you, and trusted
you’d return the favor. I thought
you wanted me as badly as I
wanted you. I thought as hard
as I worked to improve our
chances at a future, you would
be grateful for me, for every
piece of past that led to you.

Why don’t you
sit for a minute, soak in our
shared skin? Feel the pain
I feel to realize it wasn’t true.
You still only want you,
and you’ll leave me at a distance
of seven years or more,
while you live the life that
I recovered. You’ll leave me
to be a memory which you aren’t
willing to remember.