7 Years

It takes 7 years for your body to renew itself.
7 years to be rid of every cell you’ve had for the better - or the worse - part of a decade.
I learned it in science class back when teachers taught me.

Someday I’ll have a body you’ve never touched.

But I’m not even halfway there.
Most of me has been touched by you still, as a body - as a person, all of me has been touched.
But if you saw me as just a body,
I can, too,
for the sake of holding out until no trace of you can burn away my sanity.

I wish I was only a body.
I wish it would only take me 7 years to be new and unmarked.
I wish I wasn’t a person.
It’s horrible being a person.
It’s horrible to think and want and not want and
it’s horrible to be a person when people can only see the body you’re in
and not the fact that you don’t want anyone else in it, either,
you hardly want yourself to be in it,
all you want is to be, and I… I want… and..?

And people get mad when distance is a closer friend than they are - I’m
sorry, I’m so sorry, but I can’t let you have my heart.
So much of me has already gone missing, and I don’t know what parts,
and I don’t know what hands holds them,
and I can’t let you do that to the thing that keeps my blood from freezing and my body from drying out.

But I’ll have a whole new heart in 7 years.
Maybe I can afford to lose that one.