Treasure chest

Most days I imagine I will be happy
Someday
In another pocket of time
Where days radiate with warm sun
Where mornings bring shimmering hope and the promise of a new day

But other days I imagine
That even the sharpest sense of a purpose
Will simply not be enough
To coax me from disappearing
Into the gaping hole in my chest
That consumes everything in sight
In search
Of something

I imagine
That my lover will bore me
That I will untangle myself slowly
Annoyed
By too warm embraces

needing to breathe the cool air

My only reprieve
From a perfectly curated treasure chest of suffocating
Happiness
That I cannot wait to hold

Flowing from the deep

These days I let myself cry
The kind of crying that is unapologetic
The kind of crying that does not explain itself
The kind of crying that feels as if each sob is something attempting to escape
Pushing out through my chest
Bulging through like a hand gliding just below the thin barrier of a balloon
Never quite breaking the skin
Until it does

The kind of crying that lifts centuries of agony
The kind of crying that speaks of the rawest essence of pain
When I cry it is holy
I sink unceremoniously to the floor
I keel over with abandon
to the ground as if to pray
To the God I am sure has abandoned me
And when I resurrect again
And I am sure that the sorrow has dried out
I stand once more
And it’s as if it had never
happened

Menu options

I remember how you never knew whether you wanted coffee or tea
How you would stare uncomfortably at the menu
Nervous eyes
Pupils running frantically across the whites of your eyes
Until the server would grow subtly impatient
And drop their arms in defeat by their side
Their pen and pad drawing a downwards blur of white
As you pretended you could not see out of the corner of your eyes
I know you thought about how you were probably the worst kind of customer
And maybe the worst one that day
I know that you would choose tea hastily
And then aimlessly wonder why you didn’t ask for coffee instead

And yet
This time you are sure
My mind returns wearily to the flat silence of the reciever on my subtly aching ear
You again
‘I am so sorry’

The black screen stuck to the side of my face
Condensed with my anguish

I had decided something
That I was never going to speak to you again

You were never sure of anything
But that day you were
I could not bear to wonder what I could have done to push you to uncharacteristic certainty
And I could not wait to find out

Observing

Sometimes you have to take a step back and re evaluate everything
Because you’ve been living your life without noticing yourself
Watching passively from the side-lines
As you autopilot a life that isn’t yours anymore
Like you’ve borrowed everything and live with the caution that you must return it all once more
You’ve been doing it so long that it seemed normal for a while

What is there in your life that you actually want
You heart has put up a constricted metal wall
That rejects everything
It makes you want to vomit
Every choice you make is preconditioned
Like you walk around wearing a hazmat suit
So you never actually have to experience anything
See no evil
Hear no evil
Speak no evil
…and good with it

So take a minute
Strip off the suit
Find a mirror
And ask what you actually think
It’s the only thing that matters
In the end

Crash, burn, rebuild, repeat

Everything collapsed into me
It caved in as if I was never there at all
Left me tangled up and unable to move my limbs
A hair away from being crushed into non existence
All I could feel were the beads of sweat running down my face from the heat of suffocating in a wreckage of my own creation
We know how to destroy ourselves best

Slowly
Through the numbness of my body
Came feeling in my fingertips
I am slowly rebuilding
Relieved with every buzz of wires connecting
As I put them together
With precision this time
Not like the hurried,  sloppy, desperation that allowed everything to implode
Now I feel a deep sense of peace

This time
I am using titanium

My standard for happiness

My sadness is so deep,  profound and all encompassing that I have a standard for happiness. Every time I get a glimpse of the light,  I quickly offset it by thinking that it couldn’t possibly be enough to counteract all the darkness. I can never be happy and content with the simple pleasures of life. No. For me,  my happiness has to radiate powerfully. It has to be dramatic and enormous. Seen from miles around as it instantaneously blinds all those who witness it.

That is the only way that any of what I’ve been through can be remedied. Anything less can be easily discarded and is quite frankly insignificant.

Left behind

I’m tired of being other people’s lesson
I’m ready to be a blessing
Not a cautionary tale of how things can go wrong
Or someone’s haphazard first
I no longer wish to be used in that manner
Not some distant figure from the past brought up casually in a funny story
And forgotten just as quick
A dismissal of my existence here and now
I don’t want to be a used to
Not some hazy sillhouette with only a name and disaster attached
I don’t want to feel erased anymore
Because of how often I’ve been left bereft
Like a ball of yarn that has been cut open
To leave a million splaying ends undulating
That my shaky fingers couldn’t possibly tie back together
I’m tired of tying knots that only end up loosening once more

I want to be real and present
With someone
Or people
Other than myself
To be wanted now
To be the happy ending
For someone
Anyone

Keep looking

I search for power
Because love does not exist.
Or atleast it does not for me.
There is only comfort
With those who you can bear the most of yourself to
Those who are just as twisted as you are and will therefore be unafraid of your truest form
A monster
That feeds off of unhappiness
That is jealous
That betrays others
Find those who will tolerate you the most when you are your worst self and there you have it
This love you speak of

The truth

Sometimes you let yourself die in a lot of ways
Starve your body and your mind and your soul
Because nothing you have to nourish them with is enough
I’m so lost I can’t even choose something to eat from the fridge
I’m so hurt I stopped believing in humanity and goodness
I’m so weak
I want to sleep all the time
But everytime I do I feel time slipping away
I can’t get it back
I’m being thrust forward into a future that’s going to look exactly like my present because I’m not ready for it
I’m so exhausted I can’t even put on the common pretenses
Hi how are you doing where are you going
I can’t pretend to care
I can’t focus to do any work
I want to lock myself here
I need to clean my room
But it looks so much like my mind
Maybe I like it like that
So I can truly wallow in my own dirty pit of despair
Rub my face in the garbage and mud
Breathe it all in and tell myself I feel better
Type until my knuckles grind to a creaking halt
Stare at the white screen until my eyes twitch and tear up with red flavoured anguish
It’s all I can do to avoid thinking about the seed of loneliness that has been growing in me for years
Slinking its green tenticles for vines around me
Whispering that I’m not good enough
That nobody wants me
That I am not loved even by myself
That I am not beautiful
It is popular to disregard these things but never easy

Again

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
The tears that will not come out
In the early morning
Because you stayed up all night
Thinking.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Stripped bare but the heat is still unbearable
Sweaty palms reaching for a window
For air

It wasn’t supposed to be like this
Crooning in the background
From music
That’s supposed to make you feel better

It wasn’t supposed to be like this
Fighting the same fight
As before
Just in a different place

It wasn’t supposed to be like this
Wondering where it all went wrong
Wondering if you could have done better
Wondering if it will ever change

You were never supposed to think that it wasn’t supposed to be like this.