It’s been so long since I’ve had trouble sleeping. These past few weeks have been so full with friends and adventure that my body falls fast asleep before my mind can begin its nightly protest. But here I am, so conscious of everything around me. The heat of my body between my sheets, the sounds of the neighbor’s tv downstairs, the rise and fall of my chest as I breathe and breathe and breathe and remain awake. I recall my day and the things that I’ve done almost as quickly as I daydream of things that never happened. Life has been blissfully busy, but its hardly left me enough time to sit and write the way I used to. I’ve become so aware of my limited vocabulary and I’ve started to hate the way I sound. Unspoken, unthought words have been gathering dust in my subconscious, where they struggle to be free. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. The truth is I’m scared that I’ll sit and try to write only to find that I have nothing left to say. I want to close my eyes and exhale; I want the process to stop there as I fall into dreams and darkness. I want to wake again, gasping for air and clinging to life in the morning.
the names of the freeways that traverse our cities. the paths i take from your home to mine. numbers scrawled upon my heart.
tonight i chased another sunset, driving west into the setting sun. i blasted my radio and made up lyrics when i did not know the words to a song. i wanted to cry as i drove. from joy or heartache, i do not know. time has made us strangers, though we still love each other dearly. please don’t forget me and that i am here for you.
I went through old photos today, and I began to remember the things I so desperately fought to forget. My purple sundress and a picnic in the park. We bought ice cream from a vendor and shared as we sat on the grass. A night at your place, when we sat in the hall and pretended not to think of the inevitable separation the future would bring. We found markers and you drew faces on my leg. Laughing as you got lost in your duvet cover; how I always tried to steal all your pillows when we lay on your bed to watch our favorite tv shows. The day we cut your hair in the kitchen, and the softness of your curls as I ran my fingers through your hair.
how do you speak of sadness?
when is there ever a proper moment to pause the conversation, to reach inside yourself and present your Pain to others?
disfigured, beating, vulnerable
a gaping wound in your chest like a weight so you cannot breathe, nor sit for too long before it creeps upon you?
I do not seek pity nor worry
but I want others to understand
I cannot be here fully when my mind is pulled back
to a city, to family too far for me to reach and hold and protect in a way that I feel I should
You told me to sing you a love song
so I sang your name over and over again.
you are the sea and i drown in you, i drown
You took away the sun, but I learned to swallow the stars.
You said you’d love me for forever
and at those words I winced.
They’re no more than pretty lies
dressed up in expectation.
The foolish words of the naive and innocent,
the hooked pinkies of schoolchildren
broken
with time.
It’s a dangerous thing to make promises you can’t keep.
Say to me I’ll love you for as long as I know how, as long as my heart keeps pounding, beating at the walls of my chest in a struggle to be free and closer to you. I’ll love you every night as the lids of my eyes grow heavy with sleep and you are the last thing I see before I fall into darkness, and the first one I see when my eyes flutter open in the morning. I love you more than a scoop of ice cream on a hot summer day, which I will gladly share when yours goes flying off your cone and onto the floor like my stomach feels even now when I see you and am caught off guard by your beauty.
Say so many things to me, but please never say that you will love me forever.
this is a story of loss.
cold golden dawn
blazing fierce molten afternoon
touches soft like petals on my skin
body pressed into the ground
weighed down but floating,
floating,
gone.
bathed in silver our skin was glowing,
slick layer of perspiration.
but when i awoke
i was empty
It’s been hard to stay grounded to reality when lately I’ve been so lost in my own mind. It’s a little bit hilarious but mostly just terrifying how a single question could dredge up memories and moments that you thought you buried within you. I am having such a hard time interacting with people, but I can’t bear to be alone. Maybe that’s why I have been so eager to cling to cool glass bottles of fiery liquid. To drown myself in music, to stop thinking and let the bass beat my heavy heart, to let melodies move me. Why I cling hopelessly to meaningless choruses to tell me how to feel.
You are gone, but you’re still here.
Every night you’re in my bedroom
riding the final sigh before I sleep.
You are the chill air raising goosebumps
on my flesh as I unfurl myself in the morning,
You are the empty space between my fingers
as I reach for nothing.
you say that you can carry me
but i do not think you know the weight of my unspoken truths
their darkness is a burden
that i could never ask another to carry
you are defined by your absence; the way you move and break me
