Reading It Again

I read it once and felt the heat arrive,

read it twice to understand why I'm not alive

in the way they meant it, not alive as a person

but as a punchline, and reading it is like a burden

I can't put down. The group chat laughing,

their names followed by the kind of thing that's chaffing

at my confidence, at my ability to believe

I'm someone worth including. I read it to receive

confirmation that I suspected all along—

I'm the person you mock when I'm not around, the song

they sing when I'm gone. Three times I've read it.

Three times the meaning hasn't changed. I dread it,

this knowledge, but I keep reading anyway,

my thumb finding the chat without meaning to stay,

without meaning to torture myself with the sight

of their laughing emojis, the way they're bright

and cruel and completely unaware that I'm

still here, still reading, still spending time

on words that are meant to hurt, and they're

succeeding. I'm hurt. I'm aware.