[Why am I here three years later where your bedroom’s greasy yellow]

Why am I here three years later where your bedroom’s greasy yellow

walls taunt me and the deflated birthday balloons your sister gave you

hang taped above me in not your bed, not our bed, but your father’s,

and if I made my way down the bedbug ridden carpet I’d find plaster

peeling in the corners of the bathroom where I panicked,

where you soothed while I vomited, helping my quaking body into cold

showers because I thought water calmed me down like ocean—it didn’t,

and that house was falling apart, we should’ve known, we did know,

I told you stop talking, be quiet your voice made me nauseous in the deepest

hollow of my gut, in the Park & Ride on Atlantic we shared an edible,

I learned to sit with my panic, to befriend it, made it out empty-

stomached, wiped my mouth on my wrist, put my clothes

back on, snuck into bed where you laid half-high half-worried and said I’m okay,

I’m okay, now if only            I could stop dreaming                of this room.