When People Become Our Habits

By

There are habits we cannot escape
and despite our knowledge of them
as great deadeners, we will die
a hundred deaths writhing in their arms.

When people become habits, we give to them
complete and absolute power over ourselves,
we let them tie a noose around our necks
and celebrate this as liberation through love.

We break ourselves over and over again
in pursuit of permanence we know
we cannot have, and we celebrate this
as an undying strength, we call this
learning how to survive.

We push ourselves to the edge of our skins
and call our ability to dismiss
every shivering syllable of hurt
the sanctity of silence.

We give up on parts of ourselves,
bit by bit, readjusting and realigning
with a heavy dose of rationalizing
and call it the necessity of sacrifice.

We use the clever deceptions of language 
to believe that we are still in love,
that we have always been in love,
that you are my habit

and it is on days like these,
when the realization of such deceptions
hits me like night falling
in the middle of the day
that I begin to understand
the urgency of unhabiting myself.