When did it all come crashing down?
When did the glass half full spill it's contents haphazardly out onto my dingy grey carpeted floor?
When did my poor lone mattress on the floor become such a thin barrier between me and that carpet?
Why did all of these years of hoping and waiting end up here?
When did the word family find its meaning somewhere between a soulless shitty roommate and a friend I've known less than three years?
When did they stop appearing in the piles of worries crowding my mind?
And how did they so easily become replaced with my strategy of running away?
Why do you look at me that way when I repeat myself? As if the meaning of my words isn't enough if the shock value isn't there?
Can't you understand repeating myself is the only way I can promise myself it's really happening?
If I don't keep those memories in check all the time, they'll convince me I made it up again.
Please, friend, allow me to use your ears as canvases for my hysteric scrapbook one night longer.
I have to scream when I feel this way.
Endlessly my thoughts echo across the bluish grey canyon in front of us.
This time I'm not even making a sound when I open my mouth, but somehow you read my lips and rest your wary hand on my tensed back.
I know you don't want to be here, you can leave.
You'll never know what I was really saying anyways.
Recycled thoughts from last years version of this feeling float through my mind like grocery store plastic bags, or lonely balloons I might've let go of 15 years ago.
Not on purpose of course, I loved that balloon more than anything while I had it. In the only way a child understands the word 'love,' anyways.
And, like that helium, the words I speak dissipate into the air as if they never existed.
And, even more like helium, they make me sound funny when I speak.
Kiss me gently and whisper sweet nothings to me until the sun comes up.
Convince me I'm wrong, I want to be lying.
The world is big and expansive and I could never see it all.
But I can see all of you, if you want to trust me with the worst of you.
The earth doesn't hide because she has nothing to hide.
I'd much rather travel every inch of your mind and body- therein lies the most individual experience one can have.
You're all I need, I say with a catheter in my arm and my swollen heart beating out of my chest
My eyes are dilated and reflect your worry back at you; I'll be having none of that.
You're all I need, I manage to breathe out as the empty bag on the pole runs out
You catch me of course but only because I let you.
Not because..
No... of course not...
Never because I needed it.
I think losing a balloon hurt so much as a kid because getting a balloon is a moment of instantaneous joy and something good entering your life, and letting it go by accident is one of the first times you experience sudden loss of something that brings you joy. I'd rather it be that than death. Not that I have any room to speak. I lost my grandmother at the ripe age of 10 and I haven't stopped losing everything I knew and loved since.
