In Defense of Antithetical Illusions

Fragmented muses dance in
stolen silence, hindering an inability
to conquer myself's fear.

humbled is too strong a word,
and yet, here i am,
waiting for time to go on -- to continue;
to take me by the hand,
to listen to what i do not say out loud.
as children we cried when appropriate,
now, we tear up in empty theatre halls, film playing steadily, and yet i'm unawares
of anyone anything,

unaware to the couple sitting next to me at the bar, fighting

giving up on each other

too afraid to look into the other's eye,
because they'll see what was once good, and what still might be could be and very well is, and instead look around, at all the "possibilities"

thinking that happiness might exist in another lousy drink, over dimly lit candles, with someone they havenot yet met.
Or, what's worse, they think that their misery is more worthy of a story;

they think fourty years into nothing,
imagining themselves imagining running into someone they once loved, leaving thinking,

"what if"
& "if only"

fuck this and fuck that.

i tremble -- the world is collapsing at its edges and its core,
everyone i love comes to mind;
you, enter stage left,
and i freeze,

please be well.

A Study In What We Cannot Change

You once asked
me

to not make
you

a story; so i made you my future,

then You decided to not
be My future.

All i can do now
is make you a story.

A Study in This Moment

I am not ready for yo
u

To fall
in

Love with
Someone

that is
not
me

Passion.

Tonight

I feel in fine spirits
And for that reason your face comes to mind (clear as day),
as though you were still laying next to me;
i find your scent as though it were the compass pointing me Home,

and yet in the darkness of consciousness you are no closer to me than the end

and i am caught shaking yearning vacant elated tempted and devastatingly holy.

Bring me the water from the well you spit up. I won't drink it, but i'll keep it under my bed, just waiting for my final moment of lucid-ness:

One last drop,
and i'll surrender to the Universe

the way i did when you decided to walk in to my life; i only pray that i am capable of being that awake and that aware again.

The Perplexity Between This and That

I wonder if there's a version of us, somewhere, anywhere, in which we are laying in bed together, instead of me filling the emptiness with words, these words, like a prayer; a version of us where we're still holding hands, instead of me holding my breath, where the wind smells of chamomile and not like the roast beef my downstairs neighbor is cooking for her boyfriend who is celebrating another birthday; an us where you are happy and i am happy and your sister is still Here, and she happens to be staying with us because instead of being gone, she is here, celebrating our love, because she can see just how much i love you and how much you love me.

If that version of us existed, i wouldn't need Immortality. I would want to be mortal. I would love to fear the day i no longer existed just knowing you would miss me. Instead, i know you don't miss me, and pretending to be okay with that is beginning to really take effect on how often i smile in a day. I can count the amount of times i have smiled in the last month. With you, i could keep track of how often i didn't.

In this version of us, i have to waste time wishing you would come back.
In that version of us, i would spend my time making you laugh.

Let's be that version of us; this version is eshausting.