There was a lot of me, so many left-behinds and details and colours I dropped in the dirt as I walked away. These days, it feels like a grave. These days, it feels like a weight. These days, it feels like I cut half of myself off in order to birth the other half-- these days, it feels like betrayal, a funeral that never needed to happen, like someone knocking through the window of a half-built house in the kind of neighborhood where nobody brings housewarming cookies. They burn you down instead. There was a lot of me, and none of me, and some of me, carried through and carried down and carried over, and I am something else these days. These days, someone else has pushed through and this half is not mine and this betrayal is not mine and this funeral is not mine and these windows are not mine and this fire is mine and-- I am drowning in the hoses putting me out. They save you and they kill you. There was none of me, and a lot of me, and some of me, and I am climbing and falling and
Love me back.
It's been four years and two breakups later and I still don't know how to tell you that I know that you're as scared to love me as your dog is afraid of thunderstorms. And sometimes I wish we could walk around in those thundershirts to see if it would make loving me any less earth-shattering, but I know better than that. I know better than to wish for a lightning storm. I'm the kind of guy that gets struck twice, and you're the one hiding in the basement waiting for it to be over.
She told me that she's an all-in-but-afraid-to-lose-me kind of girl, just as you're an all-out-but-afraid-to-love-me kind of boy. Most days it feels
i need a hobby and i need time and i need sleep and i need and i need
thoughts scatter like dust when you blow on it,
always a cloud to choke on-
cleaning involves discomfort, i guess,
and the whirlwind causes an inability to take the next step.
i should be growing beyond the comfortable but even the comfortable is terrifying,
masking anxiety is a powerful skill (until it wears off),
high-strung and short-wired is what broke things
but workaholic and unyielding was the snapping point
i don’t know how to repair a mind.
going to a mechanic shouldn’t end with being laughed out,
constantly convinced the world will flip over,
maybe
It makes me feel like an icicle
sharp, ripped, empty
when I get that look—
the can’t-you-try-harder look,
that I-can’t-believe-you’re-not-listening-to-me look,
the I-just-fucking-repeated-myself look,
face full of disgust, a forehead crumpled into sheets of words
that you won’t say,
mostly because you don’t think I’ll hear you
the first time,
fourth time,
the talked-away-from-my-face time.
It’s okay.
Maybe you’re right.
Sick of not being able to walk around without feeling like a tiny bug
smacking into windshield after windshield
after windshield
sound from all sides and all rooms,
too
Tuesday September 2nd 2014
I guess that journal entires were made for reading,
never had one that wasn't torn away
and secret-keeping is the worst kind of concept
most nights I stay up racing until I drop out like a knock out
you lose the fight that way
maybe I'm losing mine?
I've been waiting for my boxes
one is full of ways to a high
or a low, I don't know which is which anymore
shame, pain, something like that
everybody seems surprised that I have made it here
nobody seems surprised that I keep hitting walls
my goal is to get good grades
and try not to die
I don't think those are living-type goals,
though,
nobody talks about the middle
My muscles clench and twitch and I can't wake up and I can't fall asleep. They say that it's just a symptom of anxiety, he says he is sorry that I am suffering. Nobody says that I am allowed to fix anything, though, and that's the catch phrase! that wins the game. I am seventeen and I am crying and I am nineteen and I am debating if I need stitches and I am six and I am falling off my bed dreaming about something better, it never comes. The first time your hands reached where hers did, I realized that sometimes I am capable of healing, and the first time her hands touched me I realized that I am very much capable of dying-- we are all lessons
most of the time we try to forget
I’ve gotten very good at not staring things in the face,
reality versus dreamland, spent seven days sleeping on and off on and off
whole summer dreaming
whole waking hours too tired to kill myself more
than an occasional cigarette, occasional speeding , an occasional drink
I hate being drunk
the fear is good for me, cloudy eyes and messy thinking, slamming into the walls
sleeping in an empty house does things to me
sleeping in a full house makes me regret breathing
most of the time I feel like my life has a fast expiration date.
shoulders are fading faster than my resolve,
but I hate the way his brea
spinspinspinspinspin
twenty-seven drags to finish
too much smoke, hands slapping air, I cannot think
can't think can't think
not supposed to have can't in a poem instead of cannot
it's bad writing
and I forget what the apostrophe words are called
last time I have needles is tomorrow
and no I am not an addict
one week one one one one
who can live with seven days as their deadline
most people recommend breathing exercises
some yell and tell me to be grateful
work harder
argue more clearly,
I am too young to be thrown out
too damn old to be told that i am too young
most of my life has felt like a paradox, and when the stars align
it is laughab
You make me feel like burning houses,
bruised legs from barely-finished basketball games,
all the soccer-ball-concussions that made my teeth feel like they were filled with the opposite of Novocain—
you are a motherfucking explosion of those sparks at the end of a cigarette,
I can never avoid the end, fingertips grazing hot ashes
you used to tell me stories about how I’d wake up at the slightest sound
you’d crawl out of my room so quietly
now it feels like I have to crawl into your life too quietly.
I was not created to be silent-
I think that some days you forget that I have the right to be
splashed paint all over sweatpan