I was there

Yes, I’m lonely. But it’s not his fault. The lies kept me company for quite awhile. Now they have scatted like autumn leaves. Flirting with the warm earth. Waiting for the cold rains to wash away all those silly possibilities. Like searching for that needle in a haystack. Not knowing what I’ll do when I find it.

I’ve never denied being there. I’ve never claimed to be innocent. The surprising part is that the world kept turning.

The years tumbling, stumbling along. As if nothing ever happened. And sometimes I have to wonder if maybe nothing did. Not out of the ordinary, anyway. Like walking for miles with a rock in my shoe. I could stop and shake it out, but I’m far too determined to get there. The pain little more than a distraction.

I can go back as far as I’d like but I cannot change a thing.

Remembering

Sometimes I see him reaching out. His fingers splayed and grasping. Nothing else, just his hand, emerging from the darkness. Small, innocent, trusting. Believing that someone else is reaching back.

I returned and looked again. Time has passed, but some things remain the same. All the world like quiet snowflakes. Falling on frozen memories. I guess I’ll never know why. In my dreams he’s right there. At the end of my fingertips. But my body is paralyzed and I can do little more than look and wait. For the nightmare to end. Only it never does. Just a calm surrender to the past and nagging questions that pull like tiny anchors.

Maybe I was too young. Maybe I was too weak. He was always the stronger one. All those snips and snails and puppy dog tails. No match for sugar and spice. Maybe I just wanted to know what it would be like. The future just something make believe back then.

Now it flaunts itself in the denial of a failed poet. Wasting my life, trying to explain things that I never can.

Time to wake up

I’m afraid. Of what the words might say. Should I give them the freedom they so crave. I want to write about the tragedies. To make them less tragic, perhaps. Turn them into stories and tales. Wave my wand and watch the butterflies burst forth from their cocoons. Steal back that message in a bottle, so no one will ever know. Not that my SOS went very far.

I want to relive the moments, but not as they happened. I want to change history, because I believe I have the power. Adjusting life’s rearview mirror, so I can see what’s behind me. It’s not in the past until I take that first step back.

Just frail wings, but the potential for so much catastrophe. Children crouching in the cold, until the darkness drives them home. Creeping up the sleeping steps, so loud and cruel. Surrendering to the blink of tiny lights, but it’s too late.

The fairy tale shatters. Lives come to a screeching halt. Pieces, pieces everywhere, but no words to give them flight.

I want to write about the tragedies. I want to wake up from this life.

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.