November: An Excerpt from Porridge: A Memoir

November

My heart is broken and I don’t know why.

I never gave it away after him.

Inside my chest, it hurts

And I panic

Because I cannot reach inside

And stitch is back together

Without killing myself.

My mind is unraveling as my heart rots away

I don’t understand the words that come from my moth,

I don’t believe that they are mine.

I wish I could make this pain go away,

But its inside me.

It’s the smiling and the laughter

Forced out of me,

Wrapped in barbed wire,

Ripping me apart on its way out.

It’s the mirror, looking back at me

And the worry,

And the confusion,

And the exhaustion.

It’s the light that stopped shinning on my face,

The coldness of my skin,

The hollow hole I’ve strived to fill.

It’s the friends I’ve lost,

The work I’ve put in and the little I’ve got out.

It’s the emptiness and my lack of reason

Of motive.

It’s a sickly pain that makes me nauseous and over tired.

It makes me tell my mother to stop talking and to listen.

Its her and him,

And regret,

And cowardice.

Its loneliness,

And a love of solitude.

Its the painkillers that won’t take it away

No matter how many I take.

I feel like I’ve fallen into the grave I dug for myself

And have realized it’s

Too deep,

Too cold,

And too late

To fix.

My heart is broken.

– Porridge: A Memoir 

A memoir about life after death, and a little girl who nearly lost her life after her father lost his.