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.