Wondering why

Maybe because he woke up one morning, older than he ever thought he'd be. Like a poet with a heart of glass, the winds of time too stubborn to let him go back. And there I was, with all the choices that could make it easier to forget.

Empty attics placing ads in their dusty windows for ghosts. Dark cellars tying to hang on to their damp shadows. It’s not so hard to find friends, the difficulty lies in wanting them. The future walks around in its fancy clothes, thinking I care how it’s dressed.

Maybe it’s my fatal flaw, to think everyone must love me. Just because I love them. Feelings like oversized umbrellas, only it’s not raining. Every step forward should equal all the ones taken back. But I know it doesn’t work that way. Potential with no ambition. Straw houses wishing they were made of bricks.

Still looking for some way to prove that all that isn't real now, once was.

Next time

Days later and I am waiting again. Because waiting is all I can do. A little lamb reasoning with a hungry wolf. Thinking it will actually listen. I knew just how many steps I should take, but still I kept on walking. Crossing lines and killing time that should have been used for another conversation.

I juggle the opportunities like running chainsaws and then wonder why I’m bleeding. A little pain goes along way, like echoes in empty spaces. What I want to say stuck in my head. The stairs go up, but they lead to nothing. Just more bricks in a wall that’s already been built too high.

If I was someone else this might all be different. Say good-night and that would be enough. Morning comes and it’s another day. But I’m still me and it will never be enough.

Closer

I guess I think I’ll find comfort in his answer. And when I don’t I ask again. Hoping for a different reply.

I start with the corners and work my way in, but this puzzle is never complete. Too many pieces that never fit, and not enough that do.

Part of the deterrent is knowing that I can only die once. If I don’t like it, I can’t try again. I keep thinking life might be better without all these walls. But it might also show me just how alone I am.

Believing I have nothing to offer the world that it hasn’t already seen a million times. Lost just the flipside of found. Assembling my future with tape and glue and then watching it all fall down.

Sometimes it feels like fiction. Choosing my words one syllable at a time. Counting backwards so it will seem like I am getting closer.

If only I could ever be close enough.

This time

It’s worse than the emotion itself; having to pretend, sometimes, that none of this is happening. That these feelings aren’t real. Just everyday sensations jacked up on lust and passion. Most likely to settle back down once the excitement has receded. A smoldering pile of ash that will grow cold once our backs are turned.

The blade is dull, but it still manages to cut right through me. A cold wind from the north that refuses to accept winter is over. It’s always just around the corner, a hello or a goodbye. A selfish decision that has become the most beautiful of mistakes.

He asks me what I‘m thinking and I tell him. Like giving a stranger directions, or the time. And then I wait. For the cracks to form and the sky to fall. So certain I’ll lose him in the future. Counting my steps to a door that may never open.

There are many things he chooses to forget, I can only hope this will not be one of them.

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.

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.

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.

Suspicious

The hours drip like melting ice. And why shouldn’t they? Nothing lasts forever. It all disappears, evaporates without a trace. As if nothing was ever there. And sometimes I have to wonder if I’m not imaging all this?

Believing that love will come my way and want to stay for more than a day or two. These thoughts, these feelings, like threaded needles trying to close up bleeding gashes. An effort in futility to keep alive what died so long ago.

The sweetness of his touch only makes me crave more. The love in his eyes just another song I’m not meant to hear. I name the days as if that will help me find what’s missing. My otherwise empty heartbeats like quiet footsteps in slippered feet.

Love might as well be made of paper dolls. Hands touching because they have no choice in the matter. I watch my life search the floor for its socks and shoes. Suspecting that it’s true. It's all just temporary after the door closes.

Melt

Sometimes, we'll both stop in the middle of our crazy conversation and stare at each other - quite forgetting who started what and whose story was the oddest - we'll stop and stare, and each will remember what's most beloved about the other... and then he'll smile a blindingly sweet smile, and I’ll melt away.

Alone

When I’m not with him I wonder. What he’s doing. Alone, maybe, like me. On the couch or in a chair, reading maybe, thinking. I want to call him, but sometimes we need this time apart, so I resist and let him be. I sit alone on the bed and pretend I’m paying attention to no particular movie. But deep in my heart I’m hoping. He'll call.

Room 607

A toast...

To resting my head on his shoulder. To seeing the universe in his eyes. To the comfortable silence. To the lack of secrecy. To his protective arms around me. To the way I’m not alone whenever I think of him.

To every time he’s said, “me too.”

Waiting for the words

What to write that hasn’t already been written? What to feel that hasn’t already been felt?

Pacing in the shadow of my own decision, elastic possibilities snapping me back. Alone, with myself, once more. Alone, with everyone, as always. Closeness, intimacy, understanding. Just a lie told by anxious fingers.

I keep trying on these dreams. So certain one will fit. Like turning pages in the dark because I already know the words. But dreams are only as good as the person who dreams them. Trying to write it all down before I forget. Always talking to myself, afraid to say it out loud. Wishing the whole time I was someone else.

The problem isn't that I’m waiting for him; it’s that he's not waiting for me.

What I hate

It's the clock on the bedside table that keeps reminding me that the rest of the world is sound asleep and I will not be able to get this anger out of my head before it crawls into my chest.

But tonight I came to realize that I am in love with the way his voice caresses my ears. And the way his body crashes against mine. Like waves washing away sad poetry buried in the sand. And how when I hold his hand, I remember how much I hate to be alone.

And how my heart will always find a reason not to believe a single word he says.

Stars and wishes

Twisting my words like balloon animals. He hands me an abstract red giraffe and I take it and smile. As if I didn’t have to hold up the heavens to keep the stars from falling.

I miss talking, like we used to sometimes. Where our words meant everything and lasted longer. But now it feels like the sky might shatter worse than my heart. And I doubt his hands could let go of the door knob long enough to catch the pieces.

Maybe I should just face the fact that I’m too broken. The letters drip from my fingertips as the silence settles in, but it’s not comforting. Confused promises and lingering hope and the fear that I may run out of ink before I can say the words that are so anxious to be heard.

I picture the way his hands could set all those stars free. Scatter them like diamonds, back to where they belong. And I wish that I could somehow paint my secrets across the darkened sky for him to see. But I am so afraid of how easily I crumble to the sound of his heartbeat and how my skin aches for his touch to decorate me with goose bumps.

I wish I could be more than just a cloud in his beautiful sky.

Best kept secrets

He has never asked "What’s wrong?" or "Are you okay?" As if he knows better. But he has said, "You can tell me anything.” And sometimes I want to believe that statement.

That I could tell him anything or everything. And that would somehow release all these little demons. They would go back to where they came from, or to where they now belong.

But it doesn’t work that way.

Unlocking their cages doesn’t set them free. If anything, it gives them permission to run about. In an explosion of emotion they shed their skins and are born anew. At least locked up, at least hidden in the dark, I know where they are and what they are doing.

And besides, it’s almost impossible to describe how the walls are closing in, how the sky is falling, how the world is running out of oxygen, but I manage to keep on breathing. As the past gets a little closer with every step I take away from it.

How every day is like an open drawbridge and I’m just waiting for the ship to pass.

Dark vs. light

He fits so well into this world. Seamless and solid like a park bench in summer. He just belongs.

He claims he doesn’t, that this is not his home, but I think that’s mostly for my benefit. He contemplates time and space and the possibility of life beyond the stars, like a poet with a heart made of glass. But it’s all just Shakespeare. It’s all just pretending he sees the darkness in the corners. His world is so full of light. Compared to the murkiness that I make my way through. Day after day.

His future in its fancy clothes and me not even caring if it’s dressed. Cautious feet going down steep steps. The laces tied by tired fingers. It takes so little for things to come undone.

And yet he stands there, his back to the window, to the past. As if all of this is worth it.

The road

It was a good feeling, to be headed down that road with someone. To not be alone for once. Everything real so far away. The distance measured in soft caresses, not hard miles.

But then he stopped or got detoured or found a shortcut. Because suddenly his warmth wasn’t there anymore. No footprints except my own. That road less traveled not his cup of tea, I guess. And I wanted so to be more than just a name to him. Because a goodbye offers no parting gifts; just empty boxes.

So I stopped, backtracked, consulted the map on the best way to get from sex to love without friendship. And there he was again. His hand in mine. Each step providing hope where none should exist.

Not friends, but not strangers. No sound other than the steady beat in my head, and so I listen as the music spreads. Colorizing the lament of that road not traveled.