No less lost

Pretending I have what I want, or that I know how to get it. That I could pick up the phone and he would just know, to be serious or silly. And I guess what amazes me most, is that he can be either. Like a door, opening or closing, the effort is the same but the results are different.

Too many places to go and so I just stand still and hope, that somehow the choice will be made for me. This balancing pole growing heavy in my hands. The tightrope stretching out for miles. Almost wishing I was young again. The pain the same, but somehow life was less of a stranger then.

I fear someday he may ask. And I fear even more I may tell him. As words become sentences he cannot understand. All those childhood monsters under my bed shredding dreams I’ve never had. Dog paddling through the opening scenes so I can get right to the tragedy. Where the damsel establishes her distress.

I keep thinking I have time. To forget. To paint the walls in all those shades of teenage colorblindness. Just two people with nothing to hide. No less lost for having found each other.

In the middle

Intermission, between the acts of a play not yet written. He tells me otherwise, but sometimes I have to wonder. If this isn’t what my life has become. As the hours turn into days and my pockets fill with silence. I wish I didn’t care so much, which way he comes from and which way he goes. I wish it didn’t matter so much, that so few of his thoughts are about me.

Testing my love with old litmus paper. Thinking the results might change. As the bruises on my knees turn into rainbows. Getting up; falling back down again. Each night I dream myself smaller. Making life seem farther away. Fooling the cold with more blankets and less movement. I wake up unable to remember the dream, but incapable of forgetting that I had it.

Sometimes life only makes sense when the lights are off.

Otherwise

Days without a sign and then it all catches up. I have these words, but I never know what to do with them. The afterwards is such a lonely place. The movie ends, the credits roll, but my name is never there. My heart is empty, despite all those things that fight to fill it. The lights come on, but I have no place to go.

I count the steps, out of habit. Up to heaven down to hell. It makes no difference. Neither door will open for me. My gods have always been tangible. And yet I can never get close enough.

There must be a beginning, middle and end, no matter how far I skip ahead. Pages unturned nothing more than dying flowers in dirty water. The closing song never sad enough. I always assume it’s obvious, how I feel. But his actions tell me otherwise.

What it was like

It’s possible I spent too many hours drinking back the years. Knowing no other way. Painting pictures of leopards so I could steal their spots. A lonely child with a faulty compass, searching for the forest, but never the trees.

All flames are not the same. It depends on what you’re burning. But the heat is consistent in its anxiousness. Tiny stones skipping across an infinite expanse. Thinking I’ll be able to find them again, but I never can.

Just save me some minutes. So I can have something to look forward too. Our conversations too casual to be satisfying. Forcing me to find intensity in all the wrong ways. To be homeless again. Writing my words with razor blades. Diaries of dead memories. I know you listen, but you never seem to hear me.

Windows

I feel it, but I cannot keep it. At least not long enough. For times when the rain seeps inside and dampness covers everything. So many empty rooms and I seem to be in all of them. I can hear the beat of the drum, but not the music. Like his warmth on my sheets after he has gone. Pretending that he thinks of me as I think of him. Until the enormity of the world reminds me how small I really am.

There is no such thing as loneliness when there is no one to want. Just pretty colors spoiling the darkness. Arrogant storm clouds so confident of their thunder. I have to write it down or it will all be lost. Little lies to create bigger ones.

Sipping on my denial while it’s still hot. There is no future for us, just a past. And dirty windows that keep us apart from each other. I remind him that glass can be broken, like many things, but he never believes me.

Asking dumb questions

I always wonder, will it end with a whimper or a bang? Because everything ends, eventually. Waiting for my words to come to a boil. It’s funny how I never think it will happen like this. Life isn’t made of complete sentences. People stutter and clear their throats and think I should know. It’s always about what doesn’t get said.

I want the butterfly to sneeze. I’m going to go back in time and swat every mosquito. So these walls will finally cave in on a world I don’t recognize. Just a clumsy girl with a heart made of glass.

I guess forever isn’t as long as I thought.

Time out

I’ve decided to stop writing for awhile. I’m just too broken these days; too lost. Too many pieces that seem like they should fit, but they don’t. Writing about it used to make me feel better, but it doesn’t anymore. It just magnifies how lost I really am.

Hating myself and my life

When I was 20, I tried to kill myself. I sometimes tell people I was 16. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I had more reason at age 16 and should have tried it then. Maybe I would have succeeded. At age 20, I failed. But it wasn’t because I didn’t try. My plan was fine; I just didn’t take into account everything that might happen. There’s no way I could have. Because not in my wildest dreams could I have know that someone who hated me would ultimately save me.

I was 20 and my world was crumbing or had crumbled. There was nothing left to live for. The man I loved was slowly going crazy. I had no job, no home. I could find no warmth. Everything was cold and frozen and dirty. I was more alone than I had ever been in my life. There was so much nothing.

I’ve always wished for a different life. I’ve always wondered why everything has to hurt. All the time. Why memories and ghosts and the coldness of my past is always there. And why the people I think I love seldom are. At least not when I need them. Which is always.

Life could have been over at 20. And yes, I would have missed out on some magical moments. But magic is an illusion. I sometimes wonder if it all isn’t an illusion. These feeling that I think I have to write about and this love in my heart that threatens to tear a hole through my skin and scream its existence to the world.

I hear it sometimes, in the sound of a city bus pulling away from the curb. A train whistle in the distance. The muffled thud of a door closing as someone walks in, and then out.

I shouldn’t be here. And yet, I am.

Sometimes I hate myself

It’s so easy in my head. I just say the words and they float away like tired dandelions on the edge of the wind. Perched helplessly on the lips of a gentle breeze, anxiously awaiting that first kiss. But in the real world, where the lights are bright and breezes are seldom, my words hide like field mice. Afraid of their own shadows. And I can only watch as silence floods the land.

Scared

I don't know what it is. I start a sentence or two, then hit close without saving. When I was a kid, I had a hard time learning to read. They call is dyslexia now. Back then I just thought I was stupid. But it feels the same. The words moving around, shifting and twitching and changing their positions. I try, but then it all gets too frustrating. Like over sleeping and having to race through the day, trying to make up for lost time.

Or maybe, if I could ever be honest with myself. I’m just scared of what I might have to say.