Dark places

That box in the back of the closet. It can contain everything I want, until I actually look inside. Like the darkness trapped within every black hole. A long tunnel for random trains to whistle through. I think I understand this detour. The destination little more than a combination of chemicals and circumstance.

The walls I write on used to be thinner, but it really makes no difference. The rush of air through desperate lungs is just as loud. To be close is never near enough. Hands cover my eyes so I can pretend that everything ending will begin again.

Questions pounding like heavy rubber mallets. I paused to let the doorway catch up, but it wasn’t where I wanted to go. Too frightened to be where I really belong. Back inside that closet, I peer inside the box and find it empty.

Glass dreams

I sometimes wonder if these paragraphs aren’t little more than a false landscape for curious strangers to stumble through. There’s really nothing here; nothing left to write about that I haven’t already written about a million different times. The words around my neck have become a noose, and like the stars, I feel ready to fall.

Maybe just one more time, I tell myself, and then never again. But not today, or tonight. Maybe tomorrow or sometime after that. Time always knows it has more of itself tucked away. Infinite chances to tell the world how I really feel, then and now, and maybe always will. As if forever is something anyone could understand.
Broken pieces of a mirror in my pocket, jostling and jingling as I walk. Reflecting the hidden places, where what matters is kept secret. Broken figments of who I always thought I’d be. I think no one knows, but some people do.

Life is a song I once knew that lost its chorus. It still rings in my head, the notes, the melodies, I just can’t recall what words come next. Emotions dripping from my fingertips like melting wax. I could leave this place and never look back, but words are easier than learning to fly.

It is probably just my life changing and being too afraid to sit in the bleachers and watch. Thoughts being kicked from goal to goal and myself there in the stands so obsessed with the outcome, but powerless. Knowing my dreams are made of glass, I open my eyes anyway, and listen to the sound as they shatter to the hardness below.

Thinking back

"My words, they pour
Like children to the playground"
- Blue October

He would talk of the darkness as being evil. As if there were invisible demons controlling the universe once the sun went down. He would hypothesize about the smallest pieces of the smallest things, as if they mattered the most. And maybe to him, they did. Sometimes he had more paranoia than personality.

There's only so much I can remember and then I start to imagine the past differently. Just for the sake of having something to think about when thinking is all that's left. Like those few seconds when I was weightless. When gravity ceased to exist. The first time we really touched he pulled me into his arms. Made me fall so he could catch me. I didn't think about anything at all. Just fell weightlessly into the safety of him and let the change occur.

Altered instantly from a girl who'd never known to a woman who would never forget.

Drifting

Feelings can be like stinging bees. Ripping themselves apart to break free. Colorful balloons in a cloudless sky, flaunting their strings. My fingers closing around what's already gone.

The past continues to tug on the present. I almost believe that it’s better when it hurts like this. Knowing that I can still feel pain. That my heart hasn’t hardened to the point where it will never feel anything again.

I let it all go. Confident I will catch it again.

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.

Shiny objects

It’s the glimmers in all the broken bits and pieces. That brief sparkle that makes me stop and consider that there once was something whole and complete.

It’s the subtle glances and the shy smiles and the sound of waves crashing against the shoreline. I am an abandoned seashell amongst so much sand. Consuming the sunlight and believing my hunger has been forgiven.

If I close my eyes, I can sometimes see the future. The colors faded as if having been in the light for too long. My map in shreds, but still promising that it can lead me there.

Unlock the door, turn the knob, take that first step. Going in is always easier than coming out. The hours stretch like rubber bands, but never seem to break. The walls only as real as they need to be. The floor close enough to break my fall - if it comes to that.

I can pick a million daisies and ask my question to the petals, but love will still melt like sugar if it’s left out in the rain.

Soon

It’s been awhile, maybe too long. Like going home after being away for many years. Things familiar, yet foreign.

I want to write again, but not about the same old things. Like hanging on to clothes that will never fit again. Give them away. Clean out the closets. Even forever has its limits.

The words inside my head like crowded goldfish in a tank. They might all look the same, but I’ll keep trying until I net the ones I want.

Gone

“You’re never going to learn,” she thought to herself, in between all the voices screaming in her head. So overwhelmed with the option of just giving up. To accepting the facts. That she’s not even close to where she wants to be. Deciding that she must be that easy to forget.

It was nice, for a little while. The lies keeping her warm. A heart pretending to care. Believing in something that was never really true.

But then she blinked and it was gone.

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.