i not I
Its been a few years, some days i wish i never met you, or loved you...
Truth is i’m hurt.
You loved me until you didn't, then used me because i was the only one there after all the bs.
i just wish you didn't act like i don't exist anymore.
How do you get over it so easy?
The way you looked at me when we ran into each other, so much nothingness in your eyes, so different from when you used to look at me with sparkles in them.
i truly think our love was the once in a lifetime love, a love meant to last.
Oh well, everything does have an expiration date...
Our last hug.
The hug I thought would deluge back all those memories,
Was the one that made me feel it was actually extinct.
That futile hug,
The hug that meant nothing to you.
The hug I thought would solve every complication,
That hug, the one that ended my biggest one.
That hospitable detached hug,
The hug I thought would be warm and heartfelt.
The tiresome worn out hug,
That hug I longed for.
That hug you didn’t want to participate in,
The hug I endured wasn’t the old one.
That hug that I contemplated would make you come to your senses,
The hug did nothing to you,
that it did to me.
Foreknowledge
I knew how this would conclude
yet I had expectation
I knew why I never truly granted one to love me
yet I decided you’d be the one
I knew I wasn’t deserving
yet neither were you
I knew I’d grieve you when I rouse up
yet you profess I didn’t exist
I knew we would terminate as strangers
yet I couldn't ever accept it
I knew I’d perpetually love you
yet you‘d turn away
I knew I was incapable of having someone to myself
yet you never wanted me anyway
I knew some would call me doolally
yet no one knew the things I’d do to have you back
I know I love you
Maybe someday you'll come back.
You
I permitted YOU engrave roots into my palms,
As if YOU ever showed any deservingness,
Though that never seemed to signify anything to me.
I’d sheltered YOU from frigid temperatures,
Only to leave myself congealed,
All for him I told myself, All for YOU.
I fed YOU as YOU forever devoured it all,
While I dealt with inanition alone, Yet you'd make a foul sound at anything,
All for YOU I repeated, All for him.
I started questioning the statement "all for him",
Your smile as beautiful as apricity,
Yet your lies deeper than a black hole,
All for you though…
No longer for YOU, All for me,
At least that’s what I try to tell myself.
The reality is, it’ll always be YOU.
existential happy hour
I fell into the vacuum. I don’t care who is sitting alongside me at this faux wood table made to look like a redwood sliced mid-thought. It lay there dead, palms-up. Sad.
I eavesdrop on the conversation between an unlikely pair of men beside me. He, kids 4 and 8–wife stays at home. Him, dating two years—when she finishes graduate school, they’ll be together. Boring.
Across the room, not far enough away, a crowd of eight gather celebrating an engagement. They are hanging foil balloons and landfill paper signs: “She said “Yes!””
I, on the other hand, am gravely alone. Soothing an Amber because they don’t have anything darker this time of year. Checking and rechecking my pocket with the hole for my chip to a second.
The day grew morose early. Which made it long. And it is still going.
I am not lonely except during times when the thought that I should be encroaches upon me.
I will drive to the ocean this weekend. I focus on it. The future. The fact that there is one. Wishing my life away—
And in the meantime I stay busy. Busy with work and grossly interrupted sleep and, this bar.
There are at least 15 in the engagement party now. At least three generations. I try to look into their eyes to see when hope leaves. But several are familiar and the others are cutting cake so I give up and use my chip.
And just as I sit on the other side of the room, someone walks in and everyone else screams “Surprise!”
And I can’t get out of here fast enough.
Lovers pass drunk in the night
My breaking point. Singing in hymns. He texted me at midnight. And I was ready fast. Waiting. Wet. And thirsty. But I woke up the next day: I was sober and numb. I would travel the earth with you, she said, if our timelines had aligned. But they didn’t. And they won’t. Two minutes too late. And I sit here wondering what went wrong. Within me.
Tennessee & Virginia
She was Tennessee and Virginia
You could see it in her smile.
Drifting in and out of here and there. A mushroom haze of mental health. One trip away from skippin’ out…on life and love and music. But, this hotel room smells like weed and sex and we’re both too lost to understand. We missed that this is as good as it gets. Stupid in love and high and hopeful and too old to believe in fairy tales.
I lean myself back, against the cool, calmness of the tiled kitchen floor and I settle there. In some war with myself and my mind. I look at her from time to time. These hazel eyes that control me, they roll back slightly. In some psychedelic lull from here to there.
I’d snuck in a shot or 7 by noon and we were both pretending we hadn’t noticed.
And I’m calm cool and collected, as long we don’t leave this tiled kitchen floor.
I’m sky captained out. With no ground control in sight. But, she’s smiling and she’s looking at me like I’m her savior. (I don’t even know how to save myself, y’all)
This Time, My Ass.
Can I just say
how much I fucking hate being an optimist.
I know what you're thinking,
"Hey, that doesn't sound very optimistic to me."
Well, you're damn right.
I can't stand
how every time I know the outcome of something,
there is a small part of my brain that chimes in and says,
"Just wait, this time will be different"
And I get this ache in my soul
that maybe my brain will be right this time.
Maybe this time when I go out, I will meet someone.
Maybe this time, I'll get more likes on my writing,
Maybe this time, I'll get recognition for all my hard work.
AND BIG FUCKING SURPRISE,
IT'S NOT.
It's just never different.
I feel like Charlie Brown in every aspect of my life
trying to kick the football,
thinking that this time Lucy won't be a fucking bitch
and steal it right from underneath me.
It's always the same
and every time, my hopes are dashed.
But yet,
without fail,
no matter how many times I get let down,
my brain continues,
"But maybe this time..."
The Beauty of Being Human
If human is to being
As eyeball is to seeing
Then how do we ever know
What we truly are?
In heartbeats and in dreaming,
In silence and in screaming,
We find ourselves at a distance
Existing both near and far.
Our essence isn't living,
But in loving, and in giving,
In questions that take us to new places,
In the darkness and the light.
To be human is to wonder,
What makes the sound of thunder,
To seek the truths within our core,
Always learning, always more.
As Twilight Prays
They stand alone
The only distance is time
When Daylight proclaimed
"That the Moonlight is mine"
He watched the Moon's smile
Lost, in its glow, shattered by the divine
Thats when Twilight, took a vow
That Moonlight shall be mine
Torn between loss
And eminence in his shame
Mesmerized by grief
And, torn by his pain
Twilight fell down
And his love is all that remained
Daylight boasted, brightly
Following Twilight's lady love
Coming on strongly
He might as well have a shove
Distance grew between them,
but, what remained, was his love
When Daylight began to fade,
And Twilight to take his place,
He became a sight to behold,
When Daylight lay broken and misshaped,
And then, victorious he arose
As Twilight prayed for the Moon's embrace
He showed brightly, glowing
Displaying intensely, and showing his love
Twilight gave an accent to the night
And said, "Here this is your one true love"
For Twilight's love was real
Shining bright from above