55 days, and the medium I reach for is the one I began with.
A hundred unwritten books—mythologies, stanzas, alliteration. I know the finish line intimately; its image has hounded me since the boy liked my long hair and I cut it short. The thrill of hearing the crowd feels distant. Gloriana no more. I've shed layers and gained momentum. Mile markers mean little now; I don't want remembrance at the cost of time. Time will waste me before it runs thin.
Write it down and let it go, I used to tell myself.
I penned to combat loneliness, birthing the writer from the paper that listened and the people who didn't. It was that or be eaten by perpetual blackness. To consume and be consumed, until I am nothing but crumbs you brush from the countertop and leave for the mice.
Now my loneliness is a spectre I can't grasp—not with two hands and not with words. It sits with me at the table, feasting on my dimming light whilst I starve for connection.
I want the sky to split with thunder, for the storm's negative ions to align with mine; something positive, even if it's just a chemical reaction in the air.
55 days.
YOU ARE READING
Blood Orange Periphery
PoesiaMy suicide had been two years in the making when I decided not to follow through at the last minute. Over the past decade, I've written poems, books, short stories, fanfiction and hundreds of thousands of words, but nothing felt complete. This coll...
