Borderline Personality
Trigger Warning: I understand that this poem can come off as controversial or triggering. But I also believe as creative artists we must explore myriad ways of looking at issues which are troubling and trouble us. Dear Reader, please skip this piece if you feel it might affect you in any negative way.
(Son of a gun)
You want me to get well
And show me the cuts on my skin
Stringing together symptoms from the DSM
(You think things are so linear)
I am empty for you,
Yet so full of restless, conflicting emotions of the kind
I hate you please don’t leave me
You kiss me to test me
If I will run away to another stocky person
Like I ran into your deceptive, muscular arms
Running away from another burly guy
(Why don’t you crush me if I am so frail)
Running away is your pattern
Seeking father figures you can’t make peace with
But you can’t see the painful beauty of living in two extremes
Not that I want to, not that I don’t want to
The ground under my feet is always moving back and forth
Like the circular webs of memories
That stillness cannot lure and fix
Am I too much for you?
You see the bruises, the reckless behavior
And want the neatness of logic to settle it
Like the dead, undead Freud,
But what of the feminists
Who carefully tread the waters of psychoanalysis
Made with such glorious sand dunes, I know
Yet afraid of refuting the DSM.
There will always be boxes
Wherever we place our feet in history
Threatening us to be this way or that
No matter how much we perform.
(But performances do end
I know how deeply the body throbs
And pulsates, like my whole heart,
My bones, my breath is made of pain.
Lie down with me, just this once
And talk about fathers or nightmares or doctors,
Without talking about fathers or nightmares or doctors.
Everything is mercurial
Like the charades of sunlight and shadows
I am not the only broken glass in need of repairs
But I will ask you for tape without asking for it.)
© Kaustabh Kashyap
