For someone else.
I have written about colors;
All but the colors of your voice,
All but the warmness of your hand.
My heart outruns my words,
Now my words outrun my choices;
The choices given to me,
What facts I was told.
How does a myth come to be?
What exactly do you remember?
All I remember is the end—
Eagerly dreading
The next bit of misinformation.
Your answer didn’t matter…
It was making sure
The answer wouldn’t have to change.
It was making sure
I wasn’t waiting on a mercurial.
I was still made to wait,
Knowing no words is worse
Than a lack of words.
I told you what happened before!
I told you that happened before!
We told our stories
While the jocks below our balcony
Worshiped old stones.
We told our memories;
We told our facts,
We told our choices!
You told me, without realizing,
The fact that you’ve never had the choice
To not love without a level of pain.
I wanted to show you, and let you realize,
The choice to know the facts,
To love without pain.
Why tell me about your prison?
Why me?
Because I was weak,
But still holding on?
Because I was clearly tired,
But still so restless?
Because it was expensive to be alive,
But I still kept paying not to die?
Because I knew entrapment was not just grief—
That grieving would not block the memories,
The truth you needed to have heard?
I heard your story,
I heard your song,
And I’d keep listening.
I accept it happened,
I don’t accept how it happened.
How we lost those days in the past,
The simplest days cast in Prussian shadows,
When the buildings furrow their brows.
The days we eyed that gleam of light—
That gleam between us—
Trailing the blue comet prowling overhead
(The comet I thought was named for you)
In the pursuit of catastrophes.
This comet had little wattage,
But I’ve found blue under my eyes—
Imprints of our memories,
Of our stargazing;
Imprints of the kinds of dreams cowboys have.
People like you, turning into stars,
In an attempt to be what we see,
Burning you when you touch them.
We want to be what we see.
I didn’t know that you saw
Black stars with open wounds…
With cinders that burn hearts,
Grinding away at our spirits.
For all that I loved,
I never thought you’d burn me…
Because dreams don’t have monsters at the end.
In dreams, I’m crying
Eyes wide open, I’m crying
While screaming, “I fucked it all up,” I’m crying.
While thinking of only you, I’m crying.
In disbelief, I’m crying
In disbelief that you’re not there;
In disbelief, because I shouldn’t be crying.
I hope you trust my tears…
I only ever wanted you to trust my tears.
Your eyes are shut to the words you dislike
When they make you dislike yourself
For being what you thought to be liked
By everyone…but by the by,
I hope you’ll see
That it’s not for everyone;
That it’s not for anyone.
I hope you’ll see
I didn’t like you, I loved you.
I once wrote before,
That when I open my eyes
I know you’re still there—
In belief, just like me.
Why me?
Do I need your permission
to cry over all of this shit?
The trembling, trembling, trembling
The trembling returns.
The trembling, trembling, trembling
Only stops when I’m back in his arms—
When it used to be the three of us
Clasped over the plural heart
That made the trembling stop.
Why put your hand in mine?
I don’t want to know what you mean this time,
I want you to hear what I mean…
I want you to see what I mean.
I want you to know that I saw myself in you;
I need you to know that I saw myself in you.
What did you see behind my eyes?
I tried.
I’m so sorry that I hurt you
Telling you that you hurt me;
Telling you how you hurt me.
You, you, you, me, me, me…
Now there’s none of us.
You still don’t hear me
Because you can’t hear me.
When the pain of knowing you hurt me
Warrants enough pain to end it all on a dime,
A toxic disease of the mind
That you have a different name for every time.
That’s when you know
There’s nothing for us here;
That’s when you know
There’s nothing to us here;
That’s when I knew
There was no more love between us.
Was I worth the ten cents?
How can this still be said
When I am all that I am to you?
How can that all be said,
When I waited for you to be ready?
How can that all be said,
When I waited to say I love you—
To see if you meant it—
Before I committed?
How can it be said there was nothing?
Why does all of the blame fall on me?
How can the accountability
All fall to me?
Why me?
Yet, I don’t need your excuse.
Yet, I’m uniform in knowing I’ve been hurt;
My body doesn’t feel uniform,
My body feels attacked,
But your feelings feel attacked…
There was an allotted time to rebuild trust,
If you want to look at it like that.
But even then it wasn’t given the time of day
Unless I made it part of your day
To be addressed and discussed.
Would you have even met me
If I hadn’t been blunt with my pain?
What do you have to tell me
That I haven’t already told you?
Nothing I asked was beyond reason…
Yet, your explanations seemed to be.
I feel that, because I felt nothing
When you had nothing new to say on yourself;
When you had nothing new to say to yourself.
Watered-down excuses
With even murkier lies.
I don’t know if you mean to lie,
I don’t know if you only know to lie.
I feel nothing except new pain
In response to this pain.
My body was the prison
You were never meant to lock me up in.
What is your pain?
What are you feeling?
What are you really feeling?
I think we both know…
Can I even write this if you
don’t seem to feel anything?
Nothing is spontaneous
Every word and choice is thought out;
My words and choices are painfully thought out.
Did you ever think about what you had to say to me?
I would’ve saved you from the storm,
But I can’t save you from yourself.
I have to save my own body now.
You made me happy…
I don’t want to fight.
Please see me.
Please hear me.
This is too much…
I don’t want to fight.
Yet, I can’t lose heart in a gilded cage.
I want to sit down
And have someone hold my hand.
I want to sit down
And just cry.
The more you say
The more I have to block out;
Reflect, relive, reorient,
From the whiplash I got
When you flipped your character around…
(So unexpectedly and nonchalantly.)
I’m in love with an oxymoron,
And you make me feel like a moron.
It’s my own issue,
I won’t make it yours.
But, you made your issues
Become the issue for us—
When you didn’t want to learn,
When you didn’t want to own up,
When you didn’t want to grow up,
When you wanted to point fingers
At the people who did the most.
It’s my own issue,
But I tried to make it work—
I tried to get you to hear me.
It’s my own issue,
But I didn’t want you to become one.
Saying it louder doesn’t make it right!
There was nothing else I needed to be.
The only thing I could afford to be:
Everything that was true in me,
Whatever in me you needed to see,
And whatever in me you needed to be true—
It was never too much.
I didn’t change my soul,
I didn’t change my values.
Every breath was fresh as a bright blue sky,
(Where have I heard that before?)
With orange-and-rose-tinted spires
Unknowingly outlined in darkness, in loneliness;
Beauty above claustrophobic mist in depression.
It’s expensive to be alive,
And I was attracted to your habits.
Your habits were what turned me on
To look at life without singularities;
Reject the God-given world,
Reject the short-term world.
Reject my suffering—
I had you and him to think about,
What memories could be built.
Definitive pictures of my cycle,
Sacred from my family’s wonder.
I still want to lift you up,
Kiss your forehead.
I miss those rituals.
Then you stole my agency…
You stole the meaning of my words.
But you won’t steal these words,
As I continue to lift him up.
I shouldn’t keep rationalizing your actions
When you choose to cast off my feelings.
It’s expensive to be alive;
How do I be new?
Let my voice be disembodied
And let my soul be cast,
In the name of love,
To become a memory…
The only truth there is.