Sincerely October

Unsent letters

Poems that are written in a letter like format.

To the craving Elliot
I know sometimes you think you want it, but this isn't what you crave, not honestly.
You want to feel happy, to feel whole, to not ache, but you won't find those things in the same places you lost those things.
Do me a favor and don't waste the forefront of your mind reliving the sensations that you're lucky to not have died from.
It felt sunny, but it wasn't summer.
Do you remember how quickly tolerance builds?
How suddenly one or two or five isn't enough, how one day you find you are utterly insatiable?
Remember those poems you wrote about being unable to satisfy, how nothing was ever enough for you?
Let me ask you this, do you remember any of it at all?
Do you remember the times you weren't sober?
I can't seem to recall most of the past year and a half, it's all a senseless blur.
I want to remember my life, those moments are long gone, but they don't all have to be.
Do you recall the night you thought it may be your last?
I remember it.
You realized you may not wake up tomorrow morning because maybe you took too much, you didn't seem to care.
You accepted your fate and didn't know if you'd ever open your eyes again.
Don't go back to that.
Do you recall nodding off on your bedroom floor?
Is that what you miss? I don't think so.
It's no way to live.
I feel as if Elliot went missing within the relapses.
When you get high that's all you do.
You can't seem to take your mind off of it.
All your poems are written while drunk, all your favorite songs are about chasing that feeling, everything you do easily traces back to the drugs.
Don't lose yourself like that again.

Another unsent letter to my father
I hate the thought of going home.
I love my family, but it seems they are not willing to see that I should not go back to that house.
Why would that be a good idea? Let us not pretend for one moment, let us be honest. Why should I?
I am seventeen, I have no choice in the matter, so I will bite myself until it's over.
I love my father, and I know he loves me. He believes my story and he would get nothing from me if he didn't, but I wish he could let go of what he thought he had.
His family was never perfect, there is no reconciling it.
He did his best and I believe that, but I have spent most nights terrified because of abuse he didn't notice.
I love you dad, I know you love me, so let go of what family you thought you had and embrace the one you do have.
I close my eyes to sleep and my heart starts racing because part of me is waiting to get hurt. I say tonight will be different, but it won't be.
I don't want to go home.
Why should I?
I know you are giving me options, I know you are trying to make this work, but you are too late, the opportunity is long gone.
You had a chance, and now you don't.
Don't drag me into this, you have regrets because you didn't see what you should have, but don't try to tape back together the family photos, as they were nothing but paintings.
Maybe to you it was just a house, but these rooms hold my worst moments.
I am in a never ending state of fear from the things that happened before those four walls, don't put me back between them.