[▶] for safekeeping.

manifestations

• poem ○

no, because

I find it so hard to believe.

I don't think there's ever been a time quite like this
when so many signs from the universe are thrown in my direction
arrows assaulting and thudding into
the grass of my safe haven

red roses tarnished metal
that's all I can see
copper taste lingering in my mouth, ebbing away in my head as I
gasp for air
but my throat sharpens with the grating of blades scratching at my collarbones

every cell in my body screaming at me because
it's impossible. I don't think I can ever be truly loved.
yet every other minuscule atom flooding through these emptied chambers
tell me I should try.

I've lost my pension for words
nothing flows as eloquently anymore
like thread piercing through cloth and weaving in and out, trying to seek a destination
but falling right out again
knot coming undone
even though you tried your best to tie it not
once, not twice, but four times, and
still it fai
ls.

was my mind playing tricks on me?
I think it's the intellectual connection that did it for me.
but I'm so afraid to believe in anything anymore.

if there is a reason, a sign, something -
give me my inspiration again.
breathe that light into me

because I am so afraid I will never know
what it is to love
again.

you are everything I want
I am everything I don't
and yet, as I recall so warmly
your embrace was the first one I'd felt in
months.
I don't know if I've felt more lonely or less so than ever before.
lately every emotion has been closed off to me -
I feel as if there are a thousand doors and yet
I lack the key to any of them.
I just want to feel.
its terrifying to feel numb, you know?
there was a time I wanted so badly to cry -
let everything gush forth as the waves climbed and built and borrowed and stole and usurped my chest
surging up my lungs like tirades of thunder and flood
burning as hot lava behind my eyes, my ears, my
face
breathe and choke -
but nothing.

it is so scary when you cannot even make yourself cry anymore.

I have never felt more panicked or desperate for anything in my entire life.

what do you do, when -
all you can do is frantically scrape
trembling fingers on a screen in the middle of
night
eyes darting between numbers and links and data and sources -
but none useful whatsoever
none to help
none to call
not even a crevice you can grasp onto on this
oddly smoothened surface of a supposedly rocky
wall?
there should be rocks. there should be juts and crevices
even if jagged edges draw crimson
decorate alabaster with sketches of grit and wear and tear
I don't mind.

but when there is nothing there for you to grasp onto, what can you do but
fall?

into mind-numbing lava
swallowing you whole and setting every nerve in your body aflame
yet surging forth white-hot cold
delving through your ribs and engraining itself
on the insides of every artery
?

I have lost myself so far in this aimless storm
that to be loved or to love again seems so
foreign to me.
where is the girl who once
burned with such passion and fire it
eventually burnt her
out?

where is she
what am I
now
please give me some hope. please.

a sliver.
silver.
that glint in your eye, I-
maybe I have mistaken it.

- fin -