Measure Me

There’s a clock
Embedded in my skin
Does not flow in my blood
Stained on paper
With ink so black
It may as well be tattooed across my back

And there are tallies
Up and down my arms
Represent the number of times I’ve thought about killing myself
Come here and count them
For I guarantee they will surpass my age ten times over
Experiences surpass infancy
Stuck in infancy
I’m not one.

But he calls me baby when he rocks my body sweetly to sleep
A lullaby in which I’m not prohibited to listen
The ink in my skin too new
Paper not quite yellowed enough

And it puts those tallies to sleep
In the way
That a teacher eases chalk off a blackboard at the end of the day

Measure me mom

In experience rather than height
Alive too short you say
Awake for too long I tell
Do not allow the arms that once eased me to sleep become the bars of a cell
Your perception cripples me

Look at me

But love me still
Love me like you’ll love me till the day I die
So you don’t have to see it

There’s a tick embedded in my skin
A parasitic clock
Tock’s life away
And you won’t want to be alive the day
It’s found out
Time ran out
And the ticking wasn’t even a clock