Cassidy Lee

This page includes work containing graphic depictions of self-harm and suicidal ideation.

monotony

i often feel suffocated by the

monotony of every other day

i am trapped between two bookends on the

dusty shelf of life smiling for display

i want to take a grater to my arm

and make a zest from the pink of my skin

to garnish the red tinged salt water warm

around my ankles leaving a pink rim

against the white of the bathtub maybe

then i could make some more room in my brain

or finally feel more than just empty

i try to write about all of my pain

but i can’t fit my feelings in my own mind

let alone cram them into fourteen rhyming lines

Dear Lover,

They say that no matter how tangible a person is,
Once they are placed on paper they become a character.
I am afraid, my dear, that you have been reduced to a page.
In these past weeks, I have spent too many hours seeing you
Only in the blank spaces between smudged ink on worn down paper.
My fingers are stained black from the amount of ink I have spilt in your likeness.
I have filled hundreds of pages with an exaggerated version of your image.
I used to see the line between flesh and ink but
The differences have long since been blotted out.
All this to say that I have been disappointed one too many times.
It is no one’s fault but my own, for I have sculpted an image
Out of ink and paper that no person could ever resemble.
I have constructed your skeleton from paper mache,
Whispered your flesh, your voice, your spirit into existence.
I have placed you on a pedestal that is far too high
For you to climb and I fear you will only fall while trying.
And I am sorry, only not exactly.
Because I feel that we would have only ruined each other
And I have just saved us both.

Rivals

If you think me the moon, you are the sun.
You both bathe the world
In an orange, stifling heat.
If I am a thief of light, you are the one
Who so graciously shines it upon me.
You think me unaffected, but you
Have stolen the air from my lungs and
If I could snatch the gasp back from where
It rattles between your ribs, I would
Crush bones to do so.
But, I can no longer separate my emotions
From the feeling of your fingers ghosting down my spine.
Your gift is making sculptures from the stone I provide.
You take the barest my of bones and create a being of flesh and blood.
You populate this mausoleum you find yourself in
With your own over-analyzed ghosts.
I am there, my spirit breathing down your neck,
Clacking my nails on the marble table
Only because I haunt you.
Perhaps the vines of your soul have twined
Around the wrought of my heart.
The sun too, frustrates me as you do,
Leaves me with creases around my eyes.
But at night she is quiet, and it is only then,
When she whispers into the shell of my ear
That I realize I miss her.
I wonder if you can feel the ghosts of my thoughts,
A cold hand running through your hair because
I pour them out to you when you are away
As expansive and spectral as they can be.
No night is safe from thoughts of you,
Lying in bed, but thinking of us.