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  Dec 2021 Rachel Chumley
basil
i get over things
right away. i'll never get
over anything
processing things is a ******* roller coaster and i just wanna get off this ride. rip.

08.16.2021
Rachel Chumley Dec 2021
What is real to me
Is not real to you

The weight on my back
You can’t see from your angle

I must be so bored
To complain so **** often

As my spine starts to give out
Pain trickles down each vertebrae

I must want attention
When you ask why my feet ache

I tell you how a man filled my backpack with stones

Oh!
You know who i’m talking about!
What a ******* right?

Oh.
He would never do such a thing

Well,
Because,

He’s never done that to you.

That must mean my story’s not true.

I must be so sick
And ****** in the head

To be crying at night from the soreness years later

You’d think i’d adjust to the workout
Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.

Who would want to be around someone with such a bad limp?

It’s just easier to stay in bed.

Then the pain is just mine.

And nobody gets to have an opinion on if it’s real or not.
it can feel impossible, being a survivor on your own.
Rachel Chumley May 2021
To live like this, is to dance on glass and pretend you aren't bleeding.

To brood, and drink, and take drags of a cigarette until the pain that sits in your chest turns to numb tingles that dance across the skin instead of sitting in your organs.

To swirl the wine in your cup and try to ignore the fact you hate everyone here.

To stay awake every single night by yourself filing through the memories and hating yourself in every single one.

To stare in the mirror, and pinch at the fat, and trace the scars with your fingers, and mourn the person you were 10 years ago.

To forever ask yourself what the final act was that did your brain in -
until you accepted that origin stories are for superman, and you're absolutely not 'super' in any way.

To be the person who'll take any ounce of attention, and love they can get, no matter how poison the source.

To never turn down free drugs.

To forever feel like you've let yourself and everyone else around you down, just by existing.

This is to you.

To the blissfully unaware, lonely, child,
turned to an empty shell of an adult.

Who shuts out everyone, and everything they ever loved,
to live alone in their own head.
Rachel Chumley May 2019
the beat in my chest
that had been gone for so long
had silently hummed in the background
waiting to be found.
now it echoes in my ears
while we both laugh
to nothing at all
and this simple little feeling
that I was so convinced
couldn't possibly exist -
I found it somewhere
in a parking lot
for hours
during a thunderstorm
or was it Tangled in your bedsheets?
or in a backyard with a crowd of people,
as we locked eyes
and pulled away
not knowing
a sensation
feigned for so long
was somewhere stuck in the middle
between the two of us
waiting to be found.
for C.
Rachel Chumley May 2019
When I walk away,
the memories are supposed to erupt into a final blaze.
I will leave it behind me, and lead aimlessly, into an unknown tomorrow.
embers -
remains of a fire that once kept me warm and safe
creep along my skin
I'm supposed to forget you
while I am burning alive
as if it were just so easy

My subconscious plays with me  
for months.  
It doesn't know how to forget
what it felt like to have the privilege of loving you.
a dream
your face lit in the glow of your dashboard  
I ask you to pull over
there's no words.
I know this isn't real.
I know this won't help me.
I know you'd never do this.
you stop and look at me, as if you're reading my mind,

and I kiss you one last time
after so long of being in the cold

and this feeling

the electricity
rushes over me like
i'm caught in a wave.

You sink back into your seat
while I feel a million things
on each and every nerve of my body

and it hurts me.
to know that you started this.
the emptiness.
None of these feelings are real.

I feel guilty

and im pulled into the riptide.

And I wake up,
still walking the road
alone.

with only the chills on my spine to remind me that life was ever any different.
i don't know how to not miss you.
Rachel Chumley Aug 2018
all the things you said
that night at 2 am
the pain I left you with
shattering regret that follows me like my shadow
it is scratched into the walls of my mind
how horrible I am
for finding myself
in someone else.
how I let myself do this
to someone I lived for
for someone who's absence
once ceased my desire to wake
to eat
to live
I have told myself many times
that my crime is not punishable by death-
that lie is the only reason I can sleep at night.
it is the only way I can stand to be alone with myself.
it was all the fear that I would never really have you
that finally drove you away
i still love you and i still hate myself for it
Rachel Chumley Jul 2018
I have lost everything that made up myself.
Any chance of love I had is gone.
any breath of fresh air, ripped from my throat in a cloud of chloroform, rising from the pit of my stomach.
my heart beats like an old drum. like death.
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