My Resilience Isn’t The Main Character - It’s The Villain

Know it’s always me : when claw marks resemble hieroglyphics in the plaster, an inflamed vein from nine IV punctures into the arm // what do they always say? —if you let something go free and if it comes back, it was always yours— me standing here is showing you how malignance keeps the body warm // I have been sent to the grave only to fall right back into place, as if I had never left, my eyes still deadlocked and demanding the undivided attention of the room 

riddle:

Azrael says

“if you’d like revenge on all the men who tried to murder you, just walk through this one door” // you enter the room to find it’s filled with every man you’ve loved // you hear the door lock behind you

interlude:

YOU THINK YOU CAN THROW ME AWAY?

Step over my broken bathtub body at the bottom of the childproof stairs ONE bleeding in the begonias, digging into squelching flesh with my slippery trembling fingertips trying to pluck out shards of second story window glass TWO using the ribcage as an all-natural method to collapse a 6 week postpartum lung, panties covered in piss and crawling through the casino hallway THREE skull slammed into stone and smothered by the smoldering halo of your rambling rampant ravaged rapist south coast mouth FOUR

I catch the tombstones on my tongue and turn them into teeth //

There is no difference between a haunting and how I have survived

in repetition like one of life's bad dreams

Seneca Basoalto is a writer and creative writing coach.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/senecabasoalto/