What Is Real

Ever since I was a young girl I felt like someone was watching me.

The feelings came in the night.

Or anywhere dark for that matter.

I trained my mind to do its best in muting these feelings. 

I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

Though every once in a while I feel it again.

like a soft brush against my face.

or a firm grasp around my throat.

The kind of chilling feeling that makes you swallow your spit like you’re taking your very last breath.

When I exhale I can almost see the nitrogen flowing into the air.

Thats when I decide not to breathe.

Holding breath for silence can only last so long.

Then you need to learn how to breathe so quietly, they can’t hear you.

During this time, it is necessary to turn the crazy thoughts in your head into the ones that may let you get some sleep at night.

I tell myself that it’s just this old house.

It’s just a vent, there is no one there.

That if I quietly slip under my covers right now,

no one will know I’m here.

With the heavy blankets held tightly over my entire body,

I learned to find air in an a place of suffocation.

For almost twelve years I practiced this skill like an art.

One day in that twelfth year I decided that if something wanted to kill me,

it should go ahead.

I could not continue to live barely-breathing, forever.

And when I woke up the next morning I was not surprised,

but it was rather quite troublesome to my adolescent mind.

what I had known forever came straight from my head.

But then why do I feel the warm breath of another on my neck.