Air Conditioning

Cope

Tragedy comes in threes, and I find my blood suffused with it.

I have three people I care for most.

One I made feel so anxious, embarrassed, and insufficient that they shut down for hours, and even bringing up the memory, the thought, nearly made them cry today.

Even if the conversation was necessary, the guilt fills my veins like an untamable fire.

Two I feel for, burn for, and I allowed myself some nights to explore the maze of extrusive rock- this was my mistake, my downfall, my destruction- for now I am reminded and tempted by each glance to slide, grab, touch, feel, and it's not wanted in return.

It may be for a moment, that they want what I may be willing to give, but in the end they feel regret, at letting me do what I am comfortable doing. It is in the knowledge that I leave a crawling feeling beneath their skin that I must go on.

Every time my mind is tempted, I feel the guilt, all consuming, until I am nothing but a pillar of ash.

Three I miss. I feel so comfortable with them, the only friend I can touch kindly and without fear, and yet even that is tainted. They feel loathing towards those closer to me, an envy, a pull towards being the one I rely on, that title which I cannot give.

And then despite telling me these things, they chose others over me repeatedly.

It is in this feeling of insufficiency that I crumble.

Every day I say one word as often as required to ease my mind.

Cope.

Cope with the guilt, the pain, the fire, the lava,

Cope with being rendered to ash that crumbles and blows on the wind,

Cope with being taken apart not by the piece but by the molecule, twisted and changed and painful,

Cope with life creeping up on you,

Cope with the future of more pain to come,

Cope with the exhaustion that burrows and makes itself at home within your very marrow.

Cope.

And I do.