I can so easily recall days when we’d run off to steal a few moments to ourselves. When we forgot about the world together. But my emotions have always been intense things. Some more than most can handle. I never thought they’d be too much. In hindsight, I probably should’ve known. I got careless.
My fault. Not yours.
No more alcohol to drown my sorrows. No more food to escape the bitter taste of regret that settles like bile on my tongue. Perhaps… that’s for the best. Because there’s no peace to be found at the bottom of a bottle, and I’ve drowned my senses too long already.
My mind has clouded over, and I’ve forgotten that there’s always solace to be found in wreckage, kindness during ages of uncertainty, and most of all, love, when we feel none at all.
So, it’s enough now.
It’s enough.
You keep speaking of the past, as if you were any different then.
Despair doesn’t kill. It just makes life a little more unbearable.
I care for you more delicately than I do my pen. I consider your voice over the hundreds vying in my mind. I reached out to you with hope I believed long dead… but no more. Because this has become a game now, and I’m so tired of twisted things. I forfeit.
The wind is cold. There’s no sun.
Outside, the air’s heavy and stale.
Even clouds get tired of crying some days.
Like the reflection I see on my tar cellphone screen.
An echo of myself, swaddled on this rumpled bed.
Tendrils of smoke drifting round.
Eyes groggy, limbs protesting.
Thoughts muffled by ocean waves.
Drowned out by numbness.
Long and lasting.
How can you just forgive everything I’ve done?
When here I am, feeling like I profane the very ground I walk upon.
Is it really that easy to fall asleep?
Because I’ve been sitting here,
angry and waiting to remember how to adore my own seams.
I don’t have much to offer,
Even less to give,
But if you’ll allow me the privilege of your thoughts,
Then these bandages I so often carry,
May help mend your soul.
The neighborhood dims, as I try to fill up the days,
Smoking on the porch, drinking off the cold,
Letting time pass, quite unsure what I’m doing it all for,
I keep hoping that once morning comes, I’ll wake feeling renewed,
But everything seems to disappear, blasted away from my frigid view,
Leaving me standing alone with nothing to hold onto,
Searching, screaming for the sunlight to return,
To dribble over my face, cure my ruined tongue,
And make this feeling pass — anything, please,
Come get me out of here.
To see you angry hurts,
but to see you tongue-tied,
fumbling for an explanation you don’t know how to give,
and stuttering your way through
with broken words and brittle convictions
is decidedly worse.
