Tell Me Which Part Of Me Sounds Artificial Poem by Mariam OfBabylon

you ask if this is mine?
if you knew what it cost me to write,
you would not speak.

you would not doubt me
if you heard how my silence weeps
after the page is full.

if you saw how i sit
at this glowing screen,
fingers trembling,
like each key i press
is a rib i must break
to make room for the words.

i write like i'm peeling skin from bone,
hoping the marrow knows how to speak.

i write
like i am begging god
to explain why my heart
still drums like a war signal
in a battlefield that's already buried its dead.

i write
in the dark,
with the screen too bright,
not because i can't see,
but because i can't bear
to see my own reflection
crying back at me
through the black parts of the text.

i wrote until my fingers locked,
and when they did,
i used my knuckles.

when those swelled,
i stared at the screen
and blinked letters into existence.

my back stuck to the chair.
my legs went numb.
but i could not get up
because grief had crawled into my lap
and asked to be held.

i sat there,
typing with shoulders shaking
so hard
the chair creaked like it wanted to weep too.
there are nights
i type without knowing what i've written
until i scroll back and find my insides
lined up in neat little lines,
punctuated by silence.

and you say ai,
then i cannot argue.
because how do you explain pain
to someone
who needs proof
you bled?

shall i open my mouth
and let the grave speak for me?

would you believe me
if my fingers broke
and still reached for the keyboard,
as if salvation waited
on the other side of a "period"?

the floor creaks when i finish a stanza,
as if even the house
can't bear the weight of what i'm saying.

my chest holds a museum
of things that should've been screamed,
but were archived instead.

i write like i'm cleaning up a crime scene
where i was both the victim
and the detective.
like i'm dusting for fingerprints
knowing full well
they're mine.

like i'm looking for the body
and the killer
when both are still breathing
inside me.

i tape off the edges of the page
like caution lines,
do not cross,
do not touch,
but i do.
every night.

i return to the scene.
i take photos of the damage.
i number the evidence.
i catalog the silence.
i interview the grief.

i ask myself questions
i already know the answers to,
who did this?
when did it start?
was there a weapon?

i'm the one holding the bloodied weapon
asking where it came from.
i'm the one sweeping up the broken glass
and calling it character development.

i'm the one placing my own trauma
into evidence bags
and pretending
i've never seen it before.

there are poems i don't read anymore.
not because I forgot,
but because they still breathe.
because they still lie there
on the page,
quiet as a body that has not yet been washed.

they wait for me
like graves that remember
who never came back to mourn.
they know
the exact timestamp
when my voice cracked
and i kept writing anyway.

they know
how many times i stopped mid-line
because the sentence started to sound
too much like a goodbye.

they know how many times i wrote "it's okay"
just to see if i could believe it
for more than a sentence.
some of them still have blood on them.
not a metaphor.
blood.

from where i bit my lip so hard
it split,
trying not to cry over a line
i didn't know would hurt that much
until i saw it staring back at me.

i've written "i'm fine"
so many ways
i've forgotten
what i actually meant
the first time.

now i say i'm fine
the way a sinking ship tells the sea
it's just going for a swim.

you think this is artificial?
i could hand you my throat,
and you'd ask
if the red was digitally rendered.

i could collapse at your feet
and you'd compliment the realism.
ask who choreographed the grief.

ask if i used filters for the trembling.
you wouldn't believe it even if it bled.

you'd say
prosthetic.

you'd say
staged.

you'd look at me mid-breakdown
and ask what font i used.

you'd call the sobbing
"raw."

you'd call the silence
"artful."

you'd call the blood
a metaphor.

but i was there.
i tasted it.
it was metallic and warm
and it stayed in my mouth
long after the poem ended.

i've deleted more of myself
than you've ever written.
i've erased confessions
that would split a throat open.

this isn't a poem.
it's the sound my hands make
when they try to say
i never wanted to survive this long.

i am the one
who doesn't need sad music
to type out her death sentence.

the grief is already playing,
in the sound of the ceiling fan
turning like a noose above my head,
in the hum of the screen
that lights my face
like a morgue lamp
before the sheet gets pulled.

someone will read this
and say,
"good writing."
as if it didn't
almost kill me.

this is not poetry.
this is a murder typed out in lowercase.