In isolation

it is They.

They the scattered

puzzle's parts

that lay

obscuring one

another overturned

upside down, sideways

in glances

a mess

we'd say.

Catching a glass

reflection

the taste bitter

pleasant, ruddy.

I deserve that reprimand

burning my tongue.

The tableau idyllic,

full cups, steaming

no piece missing

the scene.

Only people.

I categorize the world based on how much of it is mine.

How many things still have the remnants of my fingerprints on their surface?

How many footsteps have I left that have not yet blown to dust?

There are places in the world that I will never see.

Never touch, never know.

They are only mine in imagery, in dream.

My own forced perspective on what they could be.

I will run my fingers over the spines of a thousand library books and never know the words inside.

But the joy as I walk by is mine.

I will wait hours for a phone that never rings and never know the reason why.

But the sorrow as I leave it is mine.

I read my books, I borrow my sisters clothes.

I walk my own path, I pursue my own goals.

The world is my oyster;

it’s for me, I, and mine.

We are, everchanging

like the floater views the landscape

rolling on, in reverse, to the eye

an optical illusion.

Yet we are, paused, in sun, rain or fog

incrementally moved, even at stoplight

slipping backwards, as the adjacent trucker

pulls our impatience, by the collar,

an illusion so real, it breaks the heart

The way we are, stuck in the traffic of the stars.

The details aren't easy to share so I'll stay vague.

There were insults, there were cobwebs, there were touches

That metaphorically singed my skin in the worst way possible.

But I got out.

I lived through, as we humans do.

Two years from then,

I asked the leader of the group why it had happened.

Finally free of the space I was in,

Running from my depression the only way I knew how,

I left.

For the first time, I ignored my family's devotion to finishing things.

I ran for my life because I wanted to want to live.

I started anew.

So when I poured out my heart to this once-roommate, turned villain, turned stranger,

She could only say she was trying to help me.

And I...

I knew it was true.

Cruel.

Not fully accurate because if kindness had been her aim, the insults and mocking laughter were not required.

But it was, to her, the truth.

And I wondered.

The mind is the mind is the mind.

The body is the body is the body.

We each only get one.

If I could've looked into her head, would I have understood?

If I had lived my life in her shoes, would I be the one who could ever do such a thing to someone?

Strange thing about trauma is that it's like getting

Shot

In the stomach

With a bullet.

The pain usually more emotional and mental than physical

But I compare the two now only because

The person with the gun gets to walk away.

Unscathed.

While you, my dear, have to nurse yourself back to health as best you can.

Bleeding on the ground.

Waiting for someone to save you but realising no one else truly can.

Perspective.

To be alive is to know there are infinite possibilities.

I could be a soldier, a poet, a king.

Choosing one path nonetheless with every decision and every breath,

Even as life could branch out in limitless directions.

It's yours, it's yours, it's yours.

Your life.

I know it won't always feel like that's true but

There is no greater thing to know.

It's your mind.

Your body.

Your messy, chaotic, surreal little existence till the end.

There is no one else to feel what you do,

To hold your joy and your hurt in your heart so please...

Protect yourself.

Be kind to yourself.

Please try.

We have too short a timeline to waste it trying to be good enough for people who don't fully know us.

They can't see it.

They don't know

But you do.

You're the only one who can ever know all there is in your tired heart so

Live, live, live.

Look in the mirror.

Who is that weathered, old man

staring back at me?

When did this happen,

Life replacing youthfulness

with experience?

Do others see me

as an aged progression

of who I was then?

Or as the version

I have now morphed into,

an antique vessel.

But mirrors don’t lie.

They just show the reflection

of a true image.

So, if I embrace:

“Who I am, not who I was,”

then there’s acceptance.

That gives this old man,

the one with weathered features,

permission to smile.

I look at you and you at me

Reminding of what not to be

Because that face that I have seen

Has something from an awful dream

It says what I would never say

And speaks in such an awful way

That if I could I would forget

The desperate way I made that bet

That deal that made my life this way

That led to my fair heart's betray

To blame the one I didn't know

Would let me fail on my own

And keep me locked within a dream

To always play the things that seem

To keep me in some better way

When all around me life turns gray

And blue as every silent ocean

That keeps from you its every motion

A warbling, wandering melody

A sea of glass to show me me

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anaïs Nin

A young swan´s gilded glare gives even Tartarus light,

as dark plays bright

under innocence unbroken;

one pauses to smell the roses despite one´s suspension.

To the crooked badger brooding beneath the tree´s thick, gnarled roots,

wrapped in the all-encompassing shade,

a floral picture

is a view untrustworthy.

A painted petal slowly falling

hints at new beginnings and rebirth to one.

To another,

death and loss are inevitable.

08.17.2024.

Glass reflection, mosaic refraction

Tempered in isolation, promises in violation

Eye of the beholder, so why am I so beholden to her?

Gouge one out and pop another in

Search for another less gutting fraction

Of reality that I ought to be in

Was it all pretense, were our lenses really not in sync?

How'd it all shift in a blink before

I could pour my soul into the ink, think

I hear a shutter and glass shatter

Fractured at my feet

A thousand fractals of me that weep

From countless eyes to haunt me in my sleep

Bloodstained cut pricked eyelids

From pieces of me I picked

Up again to replace eye with

Ocean blue iris fills lakes crying

A dull hue, my daytime blue moon rising

Someone whom I once knew crying, was it me who was cruel?

I reach up for the truth and pluck yet another eyeful

Just to be able to see you fully

Darkness forms from where you should be

Have I been walking in my sleep?

Was it all but just a dream?

I feel the echoes of my screams

They lead me to the only thing I can see

Another glass reflection

No matter how many fractions

I can see,

My eyes how crooked and atrocious

They'll always be,

Refracting imperfection

we don't see things,

we see these, being (s)

we see a common are,

an art-- of-- becoming

The thou art, cannot,

be said of me, myself

I am, but Thou...

...Thou Art...

The darkness I feel maybe is the

light in you

The laugher you know is maybe just specks

of smiles I knew

What you see

What I see

is worlds apart sometimes

Sometimes all I see is you and

sometimes all you see is me.

But both of us know, none of us matter, all that matters is what we see

sometimes you , sometimes me

Sometimes nothing you see

We didn't know our choices

we wanted to be each others

we couldn't know we didn't want us,

all we wanted was trust

Old sight we have

Old sight we have