Selfishness she called it,
The state of a slowly vortexing world 
That has been my prison of such isolation, instead of small,
It is the desperate expanse of every desert.

I have been here longer than I can attempt to not own it as home.

And this “end happiness” of which you speak,
I have been here longer than I can attempt to remember what that even feels like.

It is more that I seek a state of not desiring… something else so much,
I can’t ever really stop to see the day.

You see…
Selflessness I call it.

The state of a slowly vortexing world.

Imploding on an identity that instead of made,
It was given.

A way of ignoring open wounds and seeing torture as a validation of strength
And loving the man, above all, who did it to me.

I have been here long enough for freedom to feel like abandon.

It is more that my survival was those chains that kept me so tight,
I confused the claim for love.

You see…
A death you call it,
The state of a slowly vortexing world.

A woman can’t be until a girl dies.

And I am still 4 or 5 of them,
Caught in the prison that memory is for me,
Screaming to be held and heard and noticed, and “put to sleep”
I have been here so long that I have died without the falsehoods I believed.

It is more that the child died,
The one who silenced the truth to begin with but had been screaming to tell it ever since.

You see…
She died so I could live.