Her

You think you know what it’s like to suffer?
Do you think the casual observer learns anything?
Feels anything? Feels this.
This rip. This wretch. This concrete throat.
This spinning sinking slopping swimming
When was the last time you surrendered to your own sick
Your own stratosphere
Do you know what that’s like
To really feel what no one else feels
To really be somewhere else
Be someone else
Suspended in constructed reality
Walking through your body
Submerged in the sidewalk
Because it’s hard
Because it’s solid
Because it’s something
To support your swaying ghost
Unbalanced unaccustomed
To this practice of faking it
Moving on marching forward
The nicknames the code words the language
I turned addict
But you started it
And after all of this and all of that
A page of prose in a state school anthology
Reminds me I still hate you
And you don’t think about me at all.