Scared

Some days I am scared.
Awakening to a shuddering body
It always takes a few moments before I remember that it is mine
That I am not lying in a warehouse covered in blood
Who it belongs to is always indiscriminate.
The blood, not the body.
The body is mine.

And it scares me.

I wonder what I must have done, no.
What must have been done to me, that I am in this place.
No-one walks into a slaughterhouse of their own volition.
They are lead in, blindingly, quietly, almost as if they were sleeping.
A house of dreams that can eat you up and serve on a stranger's plate for dinner.
Red-raw and dripping lifeblood as you are consumed by the world.

Doesn't that scare you?

None of it's real of course.
So I tell myself it counts less.
But then I tell myself I count less.
And then I have to start all over again.
Putting back the pieces that my mind saw fit to tear away
Until the sunrise doesn't frighten me.
Until the darkness behind my eyes is just as safe as the darkness dwelling on the streets.

Until it doesn't scare me.

I haven't quite figured it out yet.
Cigarettes and coffee fill the gaps
Where I think safety once lived.
But what does safety even mean? In a world
Where I am a commodity
And my thoughts are just a liability.
And I am mocked for my sexuality
And condemned for my promiscuity
And stripped of my dignity
And ignored for my history
And destroyed by my reality.

That should be what scares me.
And it does.