In Preparation

You see, I have a bag full of things that I hardly ever used, tucked away in all the pockets, waiting, hushed and ever ready. My shoulder aches. My fingers itch. My mind reels. My soul longs and lusts and pulls at my innards, urging me on, into some great unknown. But I tried. I took one step, then two. I could not go on. For, you see, I found I cannot leave until I have you beside me. I am the basket case, lugging along their whole life in the hopes that the moment of leaving will arrive.

My dear, a letter

To you,

This is a note, a letter of sorts, undelivered, of the kind that brews beneath the surface of your skin, pulling and scratching until it finds a way out. These words spill forth, wanton, brash, untempered, and I could not stop them even if I had the temerity to try; I would be beaten raw, bleeding from the inside. Already my breath comes out ragged, and I could swear my heart is mangled. Yet through this all, a small pulse continues, a tiny nugget of energy, a hope that strings me forward, moving me like I am at the hands of a puppeteer. But this is irrelevant. This is to you.

You who stand so close, yet so inconceivably far away, as out of reach as Tantalus' grapes, as unreadable as the sea. How did you manage to bewitch me with nothing more than the fact of your existence? Never have I been under the thumb of such torturous feelings as I am now, when my thoughts, when my body, when my heart demand you. If I stood close enough to reach out a finger and brush even the tip of it against your skin, I could not do it. If I were within your earshot, my voice would crack and crumble under the weight of your presence. My breath rasps, as though I were an emphysemic old man, and my back hunches like the trunk of an ancient tree, my eyes darting off you as quick as yours find mine, as though I am searching for something lost. In truth, I am, for have I not lost my heart to you? It elicits no surprise then, to find that they are so often drawn towards the place within which I have lost an essential part of myself. You stole from me and I blindly let you.

I would not change that for the world.

I'm forced to wonder whether you have any notion of the fact that I yearn after you like a starved orphan yearns after warmth after years of bone aching cold. Sometimes I think yes, and that you too have let your heart wander to where I might happenchance upon it. I see this, I feel it, when your eyes burn into me, bearing the knowledge that soon enough you'll be forced to retire once more behind glass walls, where the distance between us is even greater. You try to make up the lost time by the intensity of your gaze, and my heart leaps, my hands shake and my resolve melts into oblivion. Why, I believe I am all yours, more so that you do not know it, and I am convinced that I could not shake the feeling even if I were to rub my skin raw and draw out all my old blood and replace it with new. You are ingrained into some shadow part of me, my soul, a hidden corner of my consciousness which cannot be touched. If I should die tomorrow, or in a hundred years, I die with you there.

I need you. Any hope I have for salvation lies in your hands, for I have tried, but found that I myself am no match for you. But it seems glass walls are not as transparent as they seem, and I know you not at all, nor whether this is conjecture, whether this is imagination, or whether it is hallucination. But I would like to find my way to my grave, years hence, with your name still in my heart, your voice in my ear and the taste of you upon my lips.

Nymph

Oh little nymph who flits and flirts in and out of sight, a wraith, a sprite, a million things I could not name or tame, will you not bequeath your little wildling heart to me? Coax with soft spoken words the latent life which lies hid beneath the topmost barren soil in my soul; a beautiful garden is wont to grow, should it be entrusted to your hands. Your voice sounds like the murmuring of a brook over a stony bed, soft, nurturing, sparking to life an oft leashed happiness, and with a few words, you could paint me with a smile that no one else could hope to endeavour to reproduce. Without you, I may seem that I am already smiling, but my hooded self stands with head bowed, cowed by the solitary emptiness which surrounds me. Should our eyes meet across the space between the weeping willow leaves as they billow in the breeze, then I perhaps will cease to fear our distance.

Wonderful water nymph, tree nymph, fire nymph, Goddess of Untouchable Things, we too shall meet Death along his well worn path, cloaked and shadowed in the billions of souls he has claimed, but if we dance along the way and take part in merriment, in joy of each other, could we not say that a sleep is needed?

We must begin in, for who but us could take the first steps in replenishing our thirsty, withered selves? One glance is all that is needed to spark a life long encounter, and we have had more than one. Though they have been brief and short lived, no more than a deliberate meeting of the eyes and an embarrassed flickering away, our bodies unable to withstand the conditioning of urban solitude, they showed that there is more than nothing, though something less than a solidity between us, and it is ready to melt away at the barest hint of uncertainty. We - I - cannot let it, for without you, my dearest nymph, I crumble again into dust and ashes, my solidity of self evaporated in the wake of your presence.

Uncleanliness

Sometimes I cannot bear to wash away the dirt at the end of the day. I stare into nothing, soil streaking my face, blackness under my nails. The energy to move has long since left me. And so have you.

I cannot clean away the dirt when it reminds me so of you. If it the last remnant of us that I can keep, then I shall never stir to remove it. Slowly I become a husk of a person, a shell without a soul, with a heart that beats but once a day and each time for you.

Invisible Places

There's a world somewhere, one that is not the one I keep forcing you into, which is perfect for you. You fit it and it fits you, matching pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. But I, looking on the outside at you both, are finding it hard to consolidate you; wherever you look, I see someplace else, like an ill-fitting cloak draped around you, knowing that it is wrong, but unable to find the right piece of clothing to otherwise clad you in. How do I find the right place? How do I alter my perspective to see you in the world you claim to live in? I'm tired of seeing you as I do, all wrong and mismatched for this life.

Judgement Day

This is too easy. Someday, and I feel this in my bones, someday there will be retribution; someday we shall all be called into the pit to explain every little death that we caused. Because every little death is in fact a big death - every cell, every spider, every torturous comment, they will all asked to be accounted for. Who shall survive the judgement? I don't think I shall.

Crumbling Houses

Vague memories, blurry photographs, a hand that reaches out but cannot touch; they all remind me of you. There's a sliver of you, buried where the sunlight cannot burn it away, stabbing my heart with every breath I take, pleasant, sweet, unbearable pain. To dislodge it would be to lie on the surgery table of hours, my insides cut open and revealed to you, gurgling blood, red, blue, pink - black where I am slowly rotting away. You would not see what it is that ails me so, for you are blind to what you can do, unaware that someone could have let their life grow dependent on you. I'm a house on a bank of sand; either the tide will take me out to sea, or the sand will suck me under. As long as I'm alive, as long as you fall on the other side of that uncrossable line, you shall be in my heart, a splinter, a damnation, a blessing - the most beautiful thing I've ever beheld, and the most painful I've ever tried to hold. We're crumbling houses, but I could be content if I crumbled beside you.

Laws of Physics

Hurtling through space at impossible speeds, the gulf between the stars widens. Everything is getting torn apart. Down here, we cling to each other, trying to be closer. But don't you know it's in the nature of the universe to be forever wrenched apart? We tried, but even we can't defy the laws of physics.

Portrait of Me

Pen to paper, poised, waiting, a transmission device. The clock ticks by, the paper remains blank.

This is it, if a portrait of myself were to be painted, that is what I would look like, suspended in a state of thinking, but never doing. My synapses seem to have stopped firing, nerve ends silent, no longer singing with the sound of electricity, thoughts. Everything is ready, except for the mind, which cannot put forth one idea to translate onto paper. A life without a magnum opus, is that a life at all?

But I want to sit there, steady, ready in case something comes cascading down my mind, an avalanche snowballing all my other thoughts, wrapping them up in this one, the one which will put me aside in history, among the greats. Will it arrive? I cannot say. Inspiration has to find you working, but what if the first stroke of the pen is the most impossible?

Complexity; humans are complex, and then there is I, who cannot summon a thought to pen. They flee like a flock of birds disturbed by a laughing child. Perhaps if I sit still long enough, the elements will petrify me, and I shall become a sculpture, entrapped forever, a different great work - not mine but nature's; a joke.

The Wrongness of Reality

Something sits on my chest, heavy, suffocating. Have you ever stopped and thought about something you'd always taken for granted? Did you ever realise how much of things you invented in your own head? That is what this is - it's a realisation, and it's slowly killing me. That's what I get for making things up, without a shred of proof that they exist as I imagined. The mind creates perfect people - why stop it? Except for the fact that reality will set in and shatter everything you thought, nothing can go wrong.

Draining

No. No one gave you the fucking right. No one bequeathed upon you the monarchy, the dictatorship; no one gave you permission to be a tyrant. You do not have a say in how people run their lives. Look the other way, it's the only thing you're good at. Go on, walk away, I beg you. But you won't, will you? Because you think you have the right to stay and demand things of me, you think you have the right to tell me how to live my life; you think you have the right to make choices and assumptions about me when you don' t know the first fucking thing. Don't pretend it's love; don't masquerade it as something it's not, because it's a lie that doesn't sit too well with the truth. You're power hungry; one day I'm going to let you starve.

A Lamentation of Parting

I tremble with my lamentation, recognising that I live is a state of perpetual yearning, unrequited, unknown. What chance do I have? I shall merely sit by the wayside and watch yet another one slip from my grasp. She'll leave an invisible scar on my heart, and a piece of her will never leave, even as she follows the road to another destination. Nostalgia already knocks on my door, asking to be let in, but I'll have none of it while I still see her, even if I am scrambling for scraps.

Unshakeable Lies

"Where are you right now?" she breathed against my ear.

I found I could not explain that I walked a thousand miles away, along an abandoned road to nowhere, chasing dreams and visions from my mind, which danced before me, tantalising and alluring. I could not say that I was lost in a place untouchable, for that place did not really exist. I dared not shatter a moment deserving of more attention than I was giving it. So I leaned close and looked into her eyes. I took her hand and I whispered "right here".

The Subordinate Hours

Sleep, dreamer, sleep. Fall away into another world, a realm of infinite possibility. Keep yourself there as long as you can; don't face the waking world with regret. Stay strong, your day will come when you shall lie amongst the dew covered grass, staring up at the cobwebbed sky, clasping hands with your lover, the one who walks in your dreams, open, unabashed, lovely. That time is creeping, slowly, ever so slowly, but even the slowest travellers must arrive sooner or later. Until then, dreamer, sleep.

Places

Sometimes I feel as though I belong in another place. There is an irritation, a persistent tide in my heart, gently tugging me away to distant shores. They lie out of sight, over a horizon I cannot touch, but they claim my heart, my soul, my dreams; they are a waking nightmare, a too-good fantasy. If I can wake up tomorrow a different person, then why is it I cannot wake up in that homely place?

Invited Words

 

 Come, tell me that you want to watch, that you want to fall, that you want to fly. Tell me that you want to lie above the world and stare down at a city full of artificial stars, while the real ones blink on from above. Tell me that you wish you could whisper sweet words into a lover's ear. Tell me that you wish she were me.

Tell me, and I'll endeavour to do anything to please you.

Debt

Quit your sulking. The world doesn't owe you anything. We're all just bees, buzzing out and about, in and around the things which will profit us, only so we can bring it all back and give it to the Queen that is Capitalism. You don't own a thing; everything owns you. Love is just a side project to feed your soul - unimportant in the big picture of sustainability. It breaks your heart, and maybe you can't handle it, so you throw yourself off a bridge, but it doesn't make a difference; some other bee will take your place, the hive will continue to thrive, and you'll be just another memory in a graveyard of sodden thoughts. So keep it together if you want to make a difference. Remember, the world doesn't owe you a fucking thing.

Dying

Take one stumbling step, and then another. Shuffle forward, inch by trembling inch, facing down the things which want to break you. Isn't that what we're supposed to do?

But no, we sit along the sidelines, watching people play a game we long to get chosen for, but never understanding the rules. So we sit. We watch. We weep.

We're just living to die.

Unsanctioned

I don't deserve those things of beauty; light filtering through the trees, a brush of fingertips across a bare stomach, murmurs of a sleepy afternoon. No, those things melt out of my grasp, fleeing like roaches from the light.

Alone, I've become unstuck, wading through a life without a hint of buoyancy. All I'll get is grit under my fingernails, and bruises across my face for all the work I've done. All I'll keep are harsh words and hate, cancer cells of black bitterness taking me over from the inside. Goodness. What is goodness? Good things don't happen to crazy people. No one is going to care about the dregs of life, those people who are so abandoned by society that they abandon themselves. We'll all careen through the streets like ghosts until the whole city is a ghost town.

Wonderland

Things. They all collide and writhe and merge into one teeming mess of life. Not one thing happens, but millions, together, simultaneously, shaking the earth with their forces, rocking, quaking, shattering, until there is nothing but billions of pieces of ourselves scattered across the ground, falling away into the mass, to collide and merge and be reborn again. A death, a life, one with a foot on either side, trying to decide which to be.

Blood, the nature of life, spilled in birth, stilled in death, brought to the surface, red, hot, steaming even though it rises from a hollow heart. A staggering hope, a wistful illusion, a fleeting whisper on the breeze of a possibility, which flits down the street and darts out of sight when you try to get too close; a shadow from a flickering candle. Untouchable. Unreachable. Unforgettable. An education.

And all the pieces of ourselves, the things which let us be, wriggle and writhe, struggle and slither, determined, damned, broken, dragging themselves across a burning carpet of razor sharp memories. And bruised, bleeding, weary, they launch themselves into one another, colliding with another earth shattering crunch; the heavens vibrate, hell shudders, the earth sighs. A birth, a death, a life lived staring both in the face, accepting that that is how it must be. A relief.

Synecdoche

We can't help but get lost in the things we feel, brought on by some external stimulus, getting into our bloodstream, raking its claws against our heart, leaving us to bleed out from the inside. We start to live for a moment, an action, a scripted line, to satisfy the interest, poisonous and fetid, which festered within our chests when we were looking the other way. When it comes, our heart breaks, the best kind of pain, tearing us to pieces, but only the pieces of us on the surface, floating to easily be reassembled only to be broken again; we're like the adolescents, addicted to dragging a blade across their skin, because it heals to be cut again, addicted to the feeling, the synecdoche of one pain standing in for another. We're all just minds and bodies, caught in a tide of mutual suffering, brought together by the release of it with our addiction; I, no less than you, and you, not less than them. We're all hiding. We're all running. We're all terrified to face an obvious truth.

Stockholm Syndrome

It's a very tiny flutter, starting somewhere in your navel, the softest brush of wings. Then higher, an insistent flapping on the left side of your chest, in that area you'd always thought was hollow. This, my friend, is what they call "Hope" and you too shall be caught in its web of invisible but unbreakable filaments, till death do you part. But in a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome, you'll fall in love with it, forgive it, pray for it to never leave you. And one day, maybe one day, it will take you by the hand and guide you to where you ought to be. Maybe. And that is what we call hoping.

Reality Check

Small triumphs, that's all we really live for, isn't it?

Goodbye

And I felt like I lost something today. If I close my eyes and listen closely, I hear the whisper of an echo, of something that used to be so close, but will never be so close again. My body draws in breath like the ocean pulling itself in before a tidal wave; but before it comes crashing down on the shore, my breath comes out as a sigh, and I know I'm slightly further away than I was before.

I'm begged to bid goodbye, but I cannot force myself to wave. I weep. I laugh. I weep more. My soul feels like it shrivels in defense, but the truth is that it's enlivened, enhanced by all that it gleaned from a long spell of glee, punctuated by disappointment, though entirely stitched together by love. I mustn't worry, I know; this pain is only temporary. But I cannot help but find that it's a more permanent parting this time.

Between Sleep and Awake

Have you ever thought about sleep? Not the act of sleeping itself, when you're so far gone that not even the apocalypse can wake you, but the moment of falling asleep. Does it scare you that you can't remember it? It terrifies me.

Every night it's the same old thing, a cold bed waiting to be warmed by you, two blankets and a sheet, a fluffed up pillow, and the darkness which settles over you as securely as if it were molded to fit your body. Perhaps for a little while you lay there in the dark, conjuring images of a life you're sure to never live, but slowly, without the slightest acknowledgment in your mind of it, you start to fall asleep. Where, between consciously making up fantasies in your head and dreaming, does your mind stop letting you be aware of the world? One moment you're in a city far away, the next you're as unconscious as the dead.

To willingly be unaware of our surroundings, that is what sleep is. To really not know the beginning sleep and the end of waking, that is the most terrifying feeling of all. That place between sleep and awake, it's the place that will haunt you when you're lying in your bed, thinking about the way you'll soon be in oblivion, without quite knowing how you got there.