the palace, the hospital, and the museum.- Ra’ahe Khayat

 

the palace.

you have grown into the habit of walking out,
and grown out of the habit of sneaking past the door
when we slept-
because you were convinced
that the walls slammed into our bones
hard enough to make us sick.

you used to think of every coincidence
as fate.

i don’t know what you think of anymore.

these last few years,
you’ve been leaving too many footprints
on the floors
from the number of times
you’ve almost walked out,
because the seasons were seeping through the ceiling
and you’ve been away for far too long
to remember how to
adapt.

the hospital.

we keep painting everything in white
the night
before you come back-

because apparently,
it’s tragic for new tables to have old mats,
but not nearly as much as
for old faces to have new feelings.

the museum.

the thing about hatred is that
it festers-
you can smoke a pack of cigarettes,
build it a necropolis on the branches
of your bronchi, and then
let the city mourn in a year long winter
with violent snowstorms
that rip your trachea out of it’s ground,

and still,
hatred will kill your cells faster
than the cold.

you have stuffed every brick in my body
with the feeling that comes
from never being understood,
and painted it on your tongue
like a mural
hungry for plaudits.

you brought tsunamis crashing into my muscles,
seismic waves rippling under my skin,
where the tectonic plates don’t just
slam into each other,
but skewer through.

some globes make for a much better map-
especially those
with oceans bleeding out through
the rips in the eyelids.

some people make for a much better centerpiece-
especially those
who you’ve already spent years chiseling slowly,
until the only thing holding them upright
was the fear of
falling.

you’ve become a connoisseur of sorts-
collecting our silences disguised
as obedience.

you’ve become something
in the name of being someone else,
and i’ve become just another
mistaken effigy with a broken mouth
screaming at you
to throw me out.

 

Image courtesy of Pinterest

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“I’m an autumn leaf, fluttering with loneliness on a naked branch.. where I observe the world, like a specter. It’s all fleeting moments, entwined with cold mornings fading into frosted evenings. Never still, yet never moving.”

I am Ra’ahe Khayat, and let me make you fall into the rabbit hole breathing in my mind at Fallen Alone