Poetry by Melissa Lemay

      Stephen A. Wolfe CC




Shut

There’s a bottle attached to my hand
I’ve mostly shut it now
Inside of it remembers the crisp click
And the burn, eyes closing
Never sharing from a bottle that
I stole from someone else
There’s a bottle in my hand
It grafted itself there
Somewhere between 16 and 18
I can’t quite be sure
The devastating early hopeless mornings
Being left behind
There’s a bottle attached to my hand
I keep it upright for
When I tilt it over brains pour out
Along with strange beds
Waking up next to strange men
There’s a bottle that’s affixed
It never fixed anything
No matter how hard I tried to live
In the blackness
Windows opening and closing
Men coming in and out
There’s a bottle attached to my hand
People say it’s odorless
But they are liars just like me
All the smoke smells, no matter
I keep my head down slightly 
When my bottle got empty
Walking into the needle exchange
In the basement
Of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
Bleach might kill HIV
But it doesn’t kill me
There’s a bottle attached to my hand
Sweating in my bedroom
Kicking, crying out while my parents
Tell me to shut up
Deep inside the bottle are
The memories of them
There’s a bottle attached to my hand
It swelters in the summertime
It remembers wanting to be warm
It dreams of broken glass
Waking up nightmares
Some things happy smiles can’t fix
There’s a bottle sitting there
I feel tingling or numb nothing at all
I wake up like I’m dreaming
All that is over now
The darkness and the horror
Are many years away
There’s a bottle attached to my hand
I’ve mostly shut it now

​



Dissociated

That story
of the wolf you feed
is bullshit.

There is
a monster
that lives within --
call it

fear, call it
pride, call it
scars

leftover
from soul
lacerations

(deep as he went
     in
                                          and out,
     in
                                          and out,
     in
                                          and out)

that didn’t
disappear --
their thick, fibrous
tissue screams

“Remember!!”

“Worthless!!”

Pictures     * flash *
behind your
eyes, inside your
head

when you
touch, when you
laugh, when you

dance, when they
look at you, when you
speak, when you

are alive …so …long.
With these
scrapes

and these
thoughts, and the
smell of liquor

and the smoke-
stained walls,
wallpaper enfolds


you. 

I say you,

but I mean / me --
me is a painful
place 

, thing
to say, and
if I am another, well

then this is a story
dissociated
from me.

I will 
always remember
I didn’t feel safe,
no one came for me,
no one helped --

it eviscerates
every part of me.
It stays. 

And it’s fucked up,
because I’ve 
got so much empty,
and so much space,

but no one can
live here.
It keeps

scraping them out,
scraping them out,
scraping them out!

The salt
from my tears
leaves me

deficient
of times
that were happy,
childhood memories,
most of the things

that happened
during my lifetime. 
But the bad,

it’s soaked in it,
cured and
perfectly

preserved.
There it is.
There it is. 
There it is. 

I let light in,
I follow the birds
with my eyes, I smile
at a child. 

I listen to
their laughter. 
I hear God

in the leaves,
in the walls,
in the salt, 
in the   scars --

He is there. 
There is 
something.
There is hope,
a way to live
around

the monster,
a way to
learn to

live
in my empty
spaces --

they are mine.
I lay claim to them,
fall

into
them.
We merge

and there are
a million yous
in me. 

I clean them
off, bit by bit,
to ease the pain,
a soothing balm

there is. 
There is. 
There is. 

​


Melissa Lemay writes about God, addiction, trauma, healing, motherhood, and many other things. She enjoys spending time with family, drinking good coffee, and being outdoors. She loves animals. Her poem, Ephemeral, was chosen as “Poetic Publication of the Year” for 2023 at Spillwords Press; she was “Author of the Month” for July 2024. Find her at melissalemay.wordpress.com and on dVerse Poets Pub.