The Grass Is Greener Somewhere Ahead. But Half The Time I'm Walking Backwards.

I am not a beggar

I do not cry from my hunger

I bare down on an empty mouth with gritted teeth

I let holes burn in my stomach before I allow myself to eat

Consumption is a sin

To want is to waste

Like the monks before me, I know I can wait

I eat my sins

I gag from the taste

The more there is

The less I take

Because I know how much it costs

And I cannot pay

She cries tears of stars and seas,

desperate to fill infinity.

There's a strength in the palms of my hands.

And I sit in awe of it.

A short lifetime of climbing my way up and through.

Gifted and abused are my fingers.

Peppered with calluses and scars.

And I find I like it, this simple fact about myself.

It could have been true of a lot of people.

But in this moment it is my truth

I hope I'm one of the things you hold close when your feeling empty

My biggest fear

My biggest fear is the fade of feelings between two people. When you know someone so well, you can guess the next words out of their mouth. When the feeling of their hand in yours or their arm around your shoulders is more familiar than your own skin. When you could have picked them out of a crowd from any angle. When they call you because the tone of your texts changed and they wanna make sure you're alright. When the sound of their voice is clear as day in your dreams. when the smell of their shampoo brings back a hundred memories. When their hopes and dreams are the goals you work towards.

Somehow, suddenly, there's space between you. Someone else is higher on their list of priorities. The Space and time they asked for just to get themselves together stretches long and silent between you. When the constellations you memorized in their freckles fades to a random spatter of dots. When the hundreds of shades of color in their eyes fade to solid rings of primary color.

When every little thing you spent time learning about them fades, your brain un-learning its favorite things. When the connection you felt so easily between you sputters and dies even when they're sitting right across from you. When you have to start wondering “should I tell them this?”, “can I tell them this?”. When they don't come to you with their problems and you're too nervous to tell them yours. When you go from seeing them every day to every other week to “I saw him a couple of months ago”. When they used to be your best friend and now they're just a stranger whose secrets you still keep.

I spent so much time trying to tell you how much you look like the sky.

I was wrong, the sky looks like you.

Don't you just hate it when you get the chance to talk. Like finally talk for the first time in forever. And you know it's been a while since you started but everyone else talks all the time so what if you go on for a while. But now people are changing the subject and the conversation is rolling naturally in another direction like conversations are supposed to do. But you weren't done and you can't move the conversation backwards so you just get quiet. Quiet like you always are. And you don't know how long it's gonna be this time before you can talk again.

Cauterized

We hear the story of Icarus and paint it as a tragedy. We see his ambition as his ultimate downfall. He loved too much, tried too hard, flew too high. He burned up in his own pursuit of the sun. Never reaching her surface. He failed, he fell, he died. Icarus caught fire in the most glorious of spectacles as he fell back to earth. Surpassing his own goals to touch the sun in the simple quest to feel something more. Something outside the confines of our logical reality. He caught fire and burned out, bathing the earth in bright blinding light. Becoming the object of his desires. And still, we whisper in piteous tone a show of ignorance in its self. Because we don't understand the man who became a star.

There was a little girl. Maybe she was in me; maybe she was me.

But she talked too loud and she hurt and she cried and I didn't know how to make her stop.

So I slapped a hand over her mouth and held it there until she stopped struggling. Until it was quiet.

Maybe it was hate; maybe it was fear. I'm not sure why I did it and I don't know if she's still here.

Sometimes I feel echoes in memories of the person I used to be. The kind that feel like hope and pain and the unknown.

The me that cared so much I couldn't stand it. The feelings clawed at my throat and snubbed hot cigarettes in my eyes.

The emotions that set my limbs to restless and my heart racing until I was so exhausted i'd drop.

The me that was vulnerable. I killed her so I could be stronger, so I could be safe.

I feel distantly that I should mourn her but I can't think of a single thing about her to miss.

Maybe I'm not supposed to find myself in the past. Maybe I'm not going to achieve some mythical closure by carrying this sad corpse around with me. Maybe the best thing I can do is put her to rest an move on.

After all, you can't bring back the dead and I think that applies to yourself most of all.

Everyday I get older and I understand the world a little better. And yet I never have any more control over it. Any more effect on it.

I am only biding my time. Getting older. Understanding more.

Eventually, I'll have to do something about it.