It meant nothing to him any longer, only a faint tinge of sadness—and somewhere within him, a drop of pain moving briefly and vanishing, like a raindrop on the glass of a window, its course in the shape of a question mark. ~Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
~*~
i.) the jealous penmanship
clever words left tears forming in my brain
ones that i have to open up my healing bruises
just so i could let them out somewhere
somewhere my veins wouldn’t be affected severely
(it was late at night, and my stars called out from nowhere)
sensations poured out from every letter and departure,
as it entangled itself with my nerves and wore them down,
and wore them like a dirty dress, and wore them out to town
until they were worn-out; nothing but a few stray threads.
i burned half of my journals when i turned 16 and stopped trying
to imitate being an author, because writing for me isn’t an expectation–
it’s nothing but another puzzling lock without a skeleton key
and because the most delicate daydream wasn’t mine
because selfishness, to me, is not just another bland adjective
because my bones screamed with the weight of a black hole
because your reveries were enchanting. and mine were f a d e d
n o , i ‘ l l n e v e r b e a s g o o d a s y o u
~*~
ii.) softness, like his heart in the shape of a newborn galaxy
i faded into an ugly shade of something that’s neither monochrome nor coloured;
on the verge of collapsing onto the other side of the fence, threatening madly
but never quite having the contemplation to choose a losing side
as i fell down into the blue of a stranger’s wanderlust eyes.
someone else had taken most of that vibrant shade already, but i managed
to steal away just a sliver, a glimpse, an infinitesimal shiver
and it was the kind of lasting cold that froze summer hurricanes
and kept my breaths visibly foggy and crisply sharp with every inhale
(you never warned me. you don’t know me, but you knew me too well. and i never listen.)
i’ll always be an insignificant detail in the cyan tapestry you painted for yourself
and i’ve accepted that long ago when i said i loved you in my nightmares,
tossing and turning on the bed covered in plastic arrogance because
no other blanket felt warm and comfortable enough for my body to sleep on
until then, i could only sink deeper into the fathomless wish that this universe would end s o o n
i t w a s a k i n d o f l o v e t h a t m a d e s u i c i d e s o u n d l i k e m u s i c
~*~
iii.) an abrupt goodbye/the guilty party often disappears first
i was mad at something. i didn’t know what it was, but it was foolish enough
for me to take it out onto the embracing autumn sky, on the taciturn smiles that
were supposed to hold me when tempestuous desolation grabbed at my twisted throat…
and on you. you never meant anything. you just wanted to talk, and so did i,
but my tongue was a spilling box of blades, and every time i opened my
wounded mouth to make you laugh, i always ended up cutting you by accident instead.
(friend, even if i said i’m sorry, can you ever forgive me for what i’ve done to you?)
it was an unreasonable apology, and i erased myself because of my own self-hatred,
but not before leaving footprints of a migraine in your head, which you will inadvertently step on,
slip at, and hurt yourself…fuck. i don’t know why i’m like this. i don’t know why i have
to push and pull apart the only semblance of logic in my life, the only anchor
that keeps me from towing away from the tides, the last person that still feels real to me
when everything else has blurred into an amalgamated indistinct static background;
i don’t know why i feel so smothered, when you’re the only attention i’ll ever have and need.
at this point, the only thing we have is each other’s problems, and the way we both
jeered at it, taunted it, and blocked it out with our own shared playlists until we felt better—
but now that summer was just a distant memory, and so was the scarlet artwork we made of it.
you also needed comfort. but did even try? no. i ran away from the colliding wreckage
as if it wasn’t my fault, and i numbed myself out because i couldn’t do the same for y o u
i ‘ m s o r r y i m a d e y o u s a y s o r r y s o m u c h . . .
i d i d n ‘ t m e a n t o d e s t r o y e v e r y t h i n g
~*~
iv.) the midnight closes. the violent curtain falls.
the cold glow of my computer screen was rude and restless
and it made my fingers promise, crossed and uncrossed, that i would
stay with it until it slips into comatose. i have rinsed my mouth with lukewarm water
a hundred times to try to wash out the taste of stale coffee, but it never came out and now
i’m stuck with it until morning, until another astrological moon cycle, until i lose
myself in the chemical moments of something that’s so artificially natural.
i’m constantly starving myself, stuck between confidence and relapsing withdrawals of
my past life that i thought i discarded when i finally held on to my shooting star,
but it was always tethered tightly to me by a crimson string. and it always probably will be.
i’m alone. i’m friends with people that talk shit to me in the mirror, and when i bite
my chapped lips and draw blood by accident, it almost feels like atonement. almost.
(i got what i came for and i can’t try again. this is what i want…..isn’t it?)
i know that there are people out there making fun of me and rolling their eyes
petulantly as they bask in the trite, whimsical “perfection” of their storybook existence
but not everything has a happy ending, and not every sad story has to end badly.
i don’t know. i’ll never know. i’m tired and i have responsibilities that i’m not
built for, and every crack turns into a break, and a break into shattered p i e c e s
t o m o r r o w i ‘ l l d o t h i s o v e r a g a i n . u n t i l i r u n o u t o f t o m o r r o w s .
~*~
v.) nocturnes.
( a n d i ‘ l l s t a y h e r e )
u n t i l i r u n o u t o f n u m b e r s t o c o u n t ,
a n d t h o u g h t s t o f e e l ,
a n d n i g h t s t o s t a y a w a k e .
A Lost Painting