instead, perhaps, a cluttered house

By Noa Livernois   

you spend years of your life this way,

trying to make your body anything other than a body.

instead, perhaps, a cluttered house.

furniture cannot experience flashback,

an armchair has never known breathing

and so cannot misplace its breath.

trauma can only exist inside mind or musculature;

the parasite demands a living host.

so you un-become, learn inanimate,

you dissect and deconstruct until

all of the human is gone from you.

peel back your skin and find pink fiberglass,

realize you are uninhabitable.

look closer, note the beams

exposed and rotting.

even as a house no one could find a home in you.

even now the trauma waltzes in,

sits on the couch,

puts its feet up in front of the fireplace

you built with your own hands.