200 Days After

I used to never cry when characters died In books. Their deaths were words on pages That my eyes roamed over. In search Of conflict. The screams of childless Mothers seeped through the paper, Always falling on deaf ears. Pain used to be a mild acquaintance. One kept at a distance. It was the feeling Of skinned knees. Of sidewalks not quite big Enough for three people. My nights spent Grounded, eating alone, were a hollow Loneliness. Tears were sweet then. Now I devour the trigger warnings on My favorite shows, the words of decay catching My eye like gleaming diamonds. I hungrily Watch for the hopelessness buried within The stomachs of dead children. What I once Thought was Pain is merely minor casualty. Now I sob. When I see mourning. Fictional grief Is mine; every thought focused on draining What is written and making it about myself. About what Pain used to be. My mother Worried when I began pretending that I was the only one to ever hurt. To ever mourn. Now she’s the one pretending I’m not here. That is a Loneliness heavy with grief and sour tears. Pain is no longer distant. It is the feeling of cold Skin. It is the sound of the last phone call at 4:23 p.m. It is a desk with no kid in it. It is the messy room that Childless mothers now have to clean. It is the sound Of my own screams that have only stopped because I have run out of breath, and I refuse to open my lungs. The Pain is no longer my acquaintance. It is my only friend.