Through your eyes...

do you see a girl

worth living for?

Through your eyes...

do you see a flower

worth growing?

Through your eyes...

am I worth the time

to wait?

Through your eyes...

am I a beautiful

goddess worth fighting for?

I want to be something

(anything)

to you.

I want to be worthy

of your gaze

(please look at me).

I want to see what you see

(I want to see if I’m worth love)

through your eyes.

He brought me in to give me a free haircut.

It felt like a good day.

Someone told me he posted it on social media.

Someone told me it got 20,000 likes.

But instead of a clean shaven feel, I have razor-like sensations.

Like an animal rescue, like a recording of a bar fight.

I am a trend.

Soon to be forgotten again.

And when the beard grows back and

someone tells me

they’ll help me for

free

I’ll smile through the mess

of overgrowth

and

walk away.

Winds blow against my bent body

Reminders of where I am

Stuck in a looping melancholy

I can still hear my loved ones calling

Their voices only concerned

I could only hear myself falling

I am almost touching the ground

So close to reaching peace

Close to that beautiful sound

The beautiful sound of me quickly decaying

Breaking from these earthly chains

The sound of me no longer breathing

I lift the stained bottle to my twisted face

The smell an awful reminder

A reminder of my fall from grace

Mixed with some kind of horrid toxin

The alcohol taste covers little

My senses are filled with biting venom

I hoarsely choke on poisonous bile

The effects are immediate

They leave me with a broken smile

My burning body turns to a sickly numb

I lay in my warm bodily fluid

Quickly becoming apart of the scum

I always thought I would become something gold

I would fly to my dreams

But I have hit the ground, and I am only cold

Try out Challenge

In the Han River Park

When the gentle wind blows

A colorful kite

I fly over that high blue sky

Am I no different from any young man?

Like a string of loose, tangled and broken kites

Sometimes blue youth fail to get a job

To drive the young people

Freely

Like a colorful kite flying high in the sky

Sometimes it bears success and fruit.

I don't know when my kite will be free

Endless Up Challenges Today

...

It’s funny, really.

How we stare from our balconies at the ants scurrying below. How we pass them on the streets—the wanting eyes, the starving mouths, the empty hands. Hair stiff as wire, clothing an amalgam of layered coats and scarves, mismatched socks, worn-out sandals.

We pass them, and we think.

That could never be me.

Look at here. Look at now. In this moment, I’m all set. We get so acclimated to small comforts that our minds can’t even meet them halfway down. We can’t see ourselves in their shoes. Our imaginations just aren’t that big.

I used to think like that. Before the divorce and the alimony, before the recession, before the unemployment and fire and the insurance company refusing to compensate because I didn’t insure every blade of grass in my yard or knick-knack in my study.

I downsized to a trailer. But welfare cut my benefits again five months ago, and just like that I was another ghost at the panhandle. It all happened so slow. It all happened so fast.

And time don’t wait. They say it moves quicker as you get older. All I know is, as a starry-eyed grad student, I never pictured it would end up like this. I never pictured myself as a middle-aged loner sleeping with the rats under blankets of corrugated tin. This isn’t the life I went three-hundred-grand in the hole to build.

But where did I go wrong?

One minute, everything was falling into place. The next it was falling to pieces, and as hard as I tried to preserve it, the decay was just too persistent. It spread too fast, and overtook my future.

Everything’s decayed now.

Even my memories are starting to rust.

There’s a lady out here I used to pass by on my way to work, every day. I used to avert my gaze, never locking with her hungry, pothole eyes. Her chessboard teeth. Her gnarled, swollen hands and yellowed, untrimmed nails. They would reach. And I would walk. And she would call. And I would walk. And she would say “God bless you” anyway. And smile.

And I would walk.

Silent. Distracted. Too consumed by dizzying fantasies of the trophy wife who left me. Our future children that we never had. A bigger house, twice the size of the meager three-bedroom apartment we shared. I always wanted bigger, I guess. Now I have nothing. Now I’d settle for what we wanted to leave behind in a heartbeat.

I met that lady again just the other day. Apparently she’d found a shelter uptown a few months back and they’d helped her get her life in order. She got on as a dishwasher at this little diner. She looked a lot cleaner. Not fancy, by far. But she looked...ever-so-slightly like I used to. It was a sobering reversal, watching her hands.

They reached. And I couldn’t walk anymore. And she called, and from my teary eyes I could make out that her hands were no longer empty. They didn’t ask; they offered.

At the end of the day, I never had the heart to take her money.

But I learned her name.

It was Lila. Lila McPherson.

She had a name.

They all did.

Oh, and one more little bit of information I left out. The last doctor visit I could afford didn’t go so good. Not that it mattered. At this point I’d give anything just to get out.

Another year at most I’ve got to rot in this place.

I could look for the shelter that rehabilitated Lila. But why? I’d be getting polished up just to die. Anything from hereon out is an exercise in futility.

So now all I can do is find my reflection in passing. Wait for a bus window or puddle or mirror. Find myself, and try to recognize. Find myself, and try to remember. Still, it seems every newest version of myself I find, he’s so far removed from the man I knew. And there’s no strength left to change him.

All I can do is remind him, reassure him.

He has a name too.

#fiction, #prose, #challenge, #homeless, #depression

Across the confines of my mind

I saw you.

Across the scar infested memories

I saw you.

Across the ocean of tears

you saw me.

We walked with each other

and shared all our secrets.

We promised the silliest of things

like protecting each other.

You told me you'd be by my side until I died

and I promised it too.

Across the wicked mind of mine

I conjured you.

Across the depression and anxiety

I loved you.

Across my illusions

I lost you.

I tried to find you, across my mind.

And when I looked again, you were gone.