I walk up to the rabbit hole, and step over the edge.
Falling slowly down in darkness, muffled people on the outside ask how I am;

Fine.
Fine.
Fine.

I land in thick liquid at the bottom, and the voices stop.
A whisper comes from somewhere else, and it’s not a question;
just my name.

Luciana, 38

It’s not about what specifically you did. It’s the feeling in my gut that is disappearing. It’s the way I sleep at night without your voice in my ear, telling me what I need to stay up worrying about. The way I move through the world and back in time, recognizing who I was, and what I was worth the entire time. Realizing that you could never define me. That I’m nothing like you.
I cannot un-see it, and I can’t trust you now.

Luciana, 38

Tied to the bumper of a small car,
Is it mine, or his?
Either way, I have to run behind it,
Nobody is driving, anymore.

Luciana, 38

Stuck in a trauma loop – forever
Locked inside a revolving door
It’s not so bad in there, with the past
Slipped into the rip in time that I tore

Lucy – 38, 19

The part in the middle, when everyone gets up from their seats. Some decide to leave, other people sneak in without paying. The first act is over. The second act hasn’t started, but the groundwork is being laid down in the dark. Everything behind the scenes and silent, and the voices of the words the actors spoke in the beginning still hang in the air.

Luciana, 38

“Have you ever thought about hurting yourself in the last week? In the last month?”
I look over to the tiny red light on the stove that indicates there’s a burner on. I want to stick my hand on it.
“Yes.”
“Okay. Have you acted on any of those thoughts?”
“No.”
not yet.

–

When I was little kid we lived in a farmhouse with a long, gravel driveway that was an open trip and fall invitation. After each of these inevitable incidents, I would sit on the ground and squeeze my busted, little knee cap with both hands until the jagged flap of skin became flooded with that purple-red “big deal” blood as it mixed in with the dust from the drive. The wound held together and pooled like a dirty ruby, hesitating before breaking into a large droplet that would streak its way down my leg. I still have scars on both knees from all the falls, and from this habit.

I don’t know why I needed that, but there is something in being able to see definitive proof that you’ve been hurt, when most of the time there is nothing to show, and it’s all within you.

Luciana, 38

One step forward will cost falling down,
A trauma response freezes me to the ground,
why bother get up when there’s no one around?

Attempts at more steps send me back to the start,
downplaying the end/the abuse/the mental brutality,
Re-read your notes, remember reality.

I sprint forward and demand to heal NOW,
begging to un-do/to forget/to never have met,
Drawn instead into healing, slow down…not yet.

Luciana, 37

A small girl wearing muddy jeans and a dark blue hooded sweatshirt cradles a calico, polydactyl cat purring with her eyes closed. A teenager in a golden tennis dress with long, meticulously straightened hair stands in the corner, arms folded over her stomach, staring open-mouthed at the mangled mess of a woman across the room in an open-backed hospital gown. Another woman close in age and appearance, sans injuries, stands next to her.

“Did you see him? Was he there?” she asks again and again. The wounded woman reaches up into her bloodied hair and pulls the thick, wet strands down in front of her face. She stretches her hand out and wipes the blood across the face of the talking woman. They start screaming. 

The injured woman glances over at the girl holding the cat and whispers, “I saw…absolutely nothing.”

Luciana, 37

“I haven’t written anything yet. I don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“Just get up there and say his name, and then break down into tears and leave. People will think it’s the best thing ever.”
”…I literally may do that.”
“I can’t believe you even agreed to speak.”
“I can’t believe any of this.”
We stopped talking then, each picking a point in the room to stare at like two models in a live performance art piece. After some time I stood, smoothing out my khaki shorts. “I’m going home.”
“Me too.”
Each a hollow half of the whole, codependent trauma bond we had formed, Mitch and I would remain fused that way for the foreseeable future.
He walked me to my car, and hugged me tightly. “Drive safe.”
I drove home erratically, and sat down to write the eulogy.

Luciana, 37

The moment I questioned why you were here, became your very last day.
All it took was a crack in the veneer for your cover to fall away.
Your influence, importance, wedged spot in my life, served only to elevate your own;
I couldn’t be less here for that, and I’m leaving you alone.

Luciana, 36

Let them,
Leave them,
Keep going the other way.
If any of it matters,
you’ll meet again someday.

Luciana, 36

Living inside a dirty, blue sea-glass bottle,
I wander slowly and bump against the sides.
The only place to go is around – again.
The only thing to do is to repeat what has never worked.
Muffled voices talk at me through the glass.
I respond, they laugh.
Witty as ever, behind the veil that only I can see.

Luciana, 36

Floating through life I’m a small ball of light,
passing through you like a warm, glowing ghost.
And every bit of warmth you get, I give,
and I drift on, dim and cold.

Luciana, 35

I sit alone in a stadium full of people. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I turn and see you walking down the concrete stairs to my row.
“Come on,” and you move your arms into the brace for a piggy-back.
With no hesitation I jump onto your back, throwing my arms around your neck like some kind of animal who found its symbiotic counterpart.
We don’t go far, you only carry me up a few rows to a spot where there are two empty chairs next to each other that no one else seems to notice.

Luciana, Lost

I think you let me see you, like “so many never could.”
There’s a darkness in the inside that you knew I understood.
And I listened and related and absorbed some of that pain,
and now you’re feeling better,
so I won’t see you again.

Luciana, 36

It wasn’t any safer in the bubble,
clearly it could pop at any time.
But the blindness on the inside was my solace,
in a world where I believed control was mine.

Luciana, 36

I will always love you,
and no one can make me stop.
No coaxing from this nightmare,
when I’d rather not.

Call it complex, misguided grief,
a trauma bond with a ghost.
You deserve to be remembered,
and loved,
while you decompose.

Luciana, 36

No air
Dry mouth
Fuzzy teeth
Fight/Flight/Freeze
Chest in flames
Unblinking, stare at the ground until it all goes
Away Away Away

Luciana, 36

You didn’t go far, but you tried to get away,
from everything you left behind in June, 2008.
She’s in the road, upside down, she bled out…
and in Chicago lives the rest of whatever you became.

Luciana, 36

The white noise in my head is a constant scream.
A clash between the need to chase potential
and immediately manifest unachieved dreams.
The rest only craves existence and survival.

What I still don’t know is if the screamer is me,
or everything I’m supposed to be.

Luciana, 35

I’m the Star in the sky that will not burn out,
The light in the maiden that glows through the clouds,
A faraway, sparkling phenomenon,
that you can no longer wish upon.

Luciana, 35

Your short legacy is the full stop of my sanity,
every memory stored carefully is good. 
Not a mean bone in your body, though they all broke in the end,
and now you live un-broken as a God in my head.

Luciana, 35

You’re past the point of magic, and all the butterflies in your chest have died and turned to dust. With these hollowed insides, you wade around murky, rotting waters looking for that “catch,” with nothing left to find but slippery monsters covered in film sliding around your feet.

Luciana, 35

Can you get any lower? I wonder,
“Can you talk any slower?” out loud.
The difference between what’s in my mind, and what is ‘life’ is a thin line,
and everything’s lost in a cloud.

“You’re not who I thought you’d be,” she says
to herself in the mirror, but who is?
People find themselves different, and better; Not failing and falling faster,
into a trash compactor abyss.

Crush me with the rest of the garbage,
compact me down under the clay.
Or recycle these thoughts into something new,
so that I can be better someday.

Luciana, 35

Am I the sleeper? 8 hours a day.
Or does it all count when I am awake?
The worker, the admin, the Chicagoan…

Or am I the substance,
my bright, glowing mind?
The Survivor.
The Writer.
The Dream.

Luciana, 35

In a world that made sense,
There was a moment between everything that should have been,
and the reality of everything that is not.

Living inside a life that feels accidental,
I am stuck between becoming something else,
and entirely nothing at all.

Luciana, 35

Another blank page,
Another quiet winter day.
There is no quick fix,
No bailout…
And the other shoe always, always drops,
When does it stop?

Luciana, 35

Feeling left out of your own life, behind observation glass watching someone fail to live up to a basic standard of living, no giving and taking, just being taken from, who’s this shell of a human that you have become?

Nothing left to be scared of, the nightmare is you. Greasy and tired, lethargic and wired,
shut off from the world in a little room writing about becoming something you know isn’t good.

Who else sees you this way? Who else matters?
The introspection of depression is understatedly skewed, beyond all reason, beyond the point, when you’re on the outside looking in on you.

Luciana, 35

Mild
Moderate
Severe

Sinking slowly in a sea of dark blue,
motionless, without fear,
How am I here again?
All the way down to the bottom.
Breathe in, and the water flows down your throat,
swirling around your still heart.

Luciana, 35

The password changes when I’ve had enough.
Your frustration is palpable as old tricks fail,
three strikes,
and you’re locked out for good.

Losing yourself in the care of others who only take leads to one conclusion;
It’s you, or them.

Incorrect password
No attempts remaining

Luciana, 35

When you stop being afraid, you start to see the fear in other things;
How small and fragile spiders are,
with their clear skin and runner’s stance.
That, “Oh fuck,” look they give you with all eight of their eyes,
when you spot one another.
What on earth was I ever thinking they could do to me?

For the rest of my life I will only ever set them down gently, back outside,
in an attempt to repent for every time that I didn’t.

Luciana, 34

Something is broken in your mind…
Searching in vain for that extinguished light,
that will lead you back to the rest of your life.
To the person, the book, the success, the dream;
GIVE ME THE PAST is all you can scream.

Luciana, 34

Lucy’s the main character, she’s so alive!
Not quite thriving, she’s barely surviving.
Paycheck to paycheck, person to person,
big secrets, white lies,
huge smiles, loud cries,
dark-hearted drama queen; somehow she thrives,
that’s what makes her interesting.

Luciana, 34

What doesn’t kill you, just won’t kill you,
cannot kill you for awhile.
You’re alive behind the rotting of your soul and of your smile.
The blood inside your heart is rendered stale and out of breath,
The muscles at the corners of your mouth have no strength left.
Witty words choke in your throat, and every crutch is gone,
But wait, you get to learn from this, another life lesson!
With another slimy lesson in the slurry of your gut,
Whatever doesn’t kill you makes this existence a rough one.

Luciana, 34

The attention you want is temporary
a flash in the pan that tastes burnt on your tongue
it would hurt if you cared more, about them, about you
as your chest caves in on your heart and lungs

Beyond the lonely and into alone
untethered thoughts and robotic response
Into the black and lost to the blue
it’s almost over, but never quite done.

Luciana, 34

It’s been fourteen years of an unexpected spring,
made of days where you’ve felt like you haven’t earned the time,
with that dark, silent void in the forefront of your mind;
It wasn’t bad at all, but it was nothing close to life.

Luciana, 34

A crush is killed off with a few thoughtless words, dissolving on the phone, through your mind and into the air.
So easy to have perspective on something that wasn’t ever really there.

Luciana, 34

If a tree falls in the woods, does anyone hear it?
No? Who cares? It doesn’t matter to me.
Until I am the tree, I am down,
I have fallen without a sound.
Now I rot on my side in irony,
while people nature-walking step on,
around,
and all over me.

Luciana, 34

Spying something shiny on the ground, you kneel down to see, thinking what a special find! One of a kind, revealing itself to me!

Upon closer inspection it’s a piece of common trash. Broken, sharp and dirty, smells like old beer bottle glass.

Your only purpose pausing is to chuck it in the bin, to ensure it’s nasty, trashy shine won’t stop someone again.

Luciana, 33

I roll the window down and hold my hand out into the night;
reaching for the wind that glides through my fingers.
The shadow of what I wish was a ghost,
is only night air on my palm in the dark.

Luciana, 33

Never forget that no one thinks of you
The way you think they do, you’re an afterthought.
People think about themselves a lot,
and of what others think, even though they’re not.

Luciana, 33

Who reads this when I don’t post?
The short stats bar tracks a lone ghost
No rhymes for the recent, at least nothing half decent
Events not worth sharing; I slowly stop caring
My graveyard of thoughts is less than inviting
What’s up, reader? How did you find me?

Luciana, 32

Let’s meet in the dark and drive out on your golf cart on the grass in silence laughing in defiance at the finite reality
that separates you from me and it’s so dark that we can’t see or won’t believe that it’s only me wandering in a pipe dream where you’re right here next to me laughing and existing, briefly.

Luciana, 32

I knew to watch until you were gone;
The rolling stop of a black Honda around the corner was final moment of your life in my life.

The formal farewell that followed
decimated that quiet ride into the sunset;

A coming of age story wrapped in a horror show.

Luciana, 32

A constant stream of Peter Pans
floods this windy Neverland
pretending that “adulting”
is the same as Adult Man

He’s so busy, he’s not sorry
every moment is a joke
On a journey with his bros,
it’s so sick, he’s so woke

Time passes all the same
while he stunts his inner growth
despite a lifetime of avoidance,
on the outside, Pan’s a man

Trapped inside an aging shell,
that is now his living hell

Luciana, 32

I am here to steal your dreams,
lagging and lazy, you settle for less.
Ambition fading, you become one of the rest,
while I live out your days that would have been best.

I will set on my shelves what you never earned,
Explore places you never knew existed,
Know myself more than you’ll ever know you,
Succeed, while you rot in a lack of resistance.

Longingly look back lamenting all you didn’t do,
and know that everything got done,
my Me, and not by you.

Luciana, 32

Thought out
Pushed send
Left on read
Left un-dead

More to say?
LEAVE UNSAID
Otherwise,
Desperate

Fuck this
Fuck texts
What happened to
My confidence?

Blinking dots,
a dumb reply
Response from me
IDK why

Thoughts, text
To what end?
DING, read
Grimace, send

I remember
times before
calls and voicemails
knocks on doors

AOL and MSN
Locker notes with neon pens
Show up, face to face,
No chance for a ghost escape

No LOL
No endless wait
No end in sight
No empty light

FML
This sightless stare,
Fuck these texts
Modern nightmare.

Luciana, 32

The alarm sounds and my eyelids slowly un-peel. I reach for a tiny axe on the nightstand, open the door to my chest and listen for the quiet beat in the dark. I slam the axe as hard as I can, straight down the middle of my heart, and feel the fracture spread like a virus.

Broken, bleeding fragments clatter down the insides of my ribcage, coming to rest in a mangled, dysfunctional pile in the pit of my stomach.

When the last piece falls, I close the door, wipe the blood off the little axe, and set it back on the nightstand. With a sufficiently shattered heart, I stand up out of bed. Ready to face another day where no one else has a chance at it.

Luciana, 31