Ashley Logan

My brain is both my brain and not my brain, / at once wild and feral, / at once subdued and desperate. / The names I have answered to: / crazy, emotional, unpredictable and predictable alike, / too insert-verb-here. Acceptance / of every perspective and perception / but my own. / All the guilty pleasures / I no longer feel guilty about, / like the books, the desserts, / the loves I fostered and then let go — / searching, longing. / The inability to know what I was looking for, / only that I’ve been looking. / Wandering. The losing of my self, / over and over and over — / a plummet I can never avoid / into a chilled pool of waterfall, / observing as everything I built tumbles / over the edge after, crashing / into brokenness upon my half-submerged head. / Eyes turned up to watch / the fall but unable to stop it. / Witnessing. My overgrown garden / a burial ground of every fresh start / and the abandoned senses that used to be / mine — before. My brain / is both my brain and not my brain. / Endlessly, we create these ghosts; / we determine what lives.