From what are you wanting to be saved?

Deny deny deny on your light I am dependent

But it's not my honor you're defending

A sentiment I understand better now I think

as the lyrics come to me without reaching

the want to be illuminated by an other

so much about you, so little about them

another just a pawn in a game we play with ourselves

(constantly, endlessly)

I wake from dreams of war, of fighting,

of escape canoes. I look her in the eyes and say,

I don't blame you.

(She does not take it well). Endings are never endings as we construe them.

Even if we pull them off they are always stickier than we had imagined,

dig a little too deep, draw blood, landed slightly funny on the ankle.

It is an eternal fight and in the morning light I see again that it is the only one.

That it is the one I am fighting and wishing it were not so

is one of the many ways to lose.

(Perhaps it is not a battle. Perhaps thinking of it in this way is also a trap.)

The key to find the light within oneself, or out in the world, but to trap it within oneself

for it not to lay reflected in the face of another (another painful fragment from yesterday,

words lodged between your ribs, she must integrate what it is she is projecting on him to herself,

that's the only way to stop loving the wrong person) is it wrong to love anyone?

can I love any one? will the stars let me? drowning in existential first world dilemmas that are

at their heart the issues of each beating chest. to make great art must I live great loneliness?

nothing is ever assured and how do we each find our own enough. find and shape and define

and redefine it, painful and necessary as that is. how do we live another day? how do we tell

ourselves, not today darling, today that is too much. today the weight of my mind might drown me

in the ocean of my own thoughts. today I must be simple and rejoice in my simpleness.

delight in the intellectualizing of such a trivial decision. today I must make decisions and not overthink them. 

today I must take at face value that what claims to be, true.

everything is breaking down

and begging to begin again

tuesday morning lament

throwing myself in every direction
hoping that I'll stick
my saviors in the mirror
but I keep at it

holding out for a hero
to wash away all my blues
kiss me in the morning
paint me bare with sunset hues

how does one learn to stop searching for the antidote?
it's an irresistible solution, a mesmerizing unforgettable trope

running from myself hold me love me know me
distract me give me some peace from the workings of my mind
when I'm alone all I can do is count the time
when I'm alone the only place I'll ever find the sublime

but I'm too stressed to think straight
and I just want to be saved.

friday night curse

So hard to break the spell
On me
A damsel in distress
Save me
I am so powerless
So angry
And unable to express

Taught to shut my lips and smile
To bide my time and wait a while
To stomach all your juvenile traits
"Why men great til they gotta be great"

And the cruelest trick
Is the one that digs into the core
Thinking myself crazy for wanting more
Unreasonable and dramatic
Over the top to your anticlimactic

I get used to pulling the strings
Being the one who does all the things
Underwhelmed by you and relishing me
You’re just a reflection that I breathe life into

Another shoddy aspect
The way paining over you just gives you more power
I should just delete you from my mind
Rise above and save myself the time
Instead of always saving drowning ships that aren’t mine

And I think to myself

What I want most really is friends
Because they last longer
The connection not so unstable
Rooted in a commitment to live ones life side by side
Interweaving in and out
A resonance of characters
A culture of care, interest, intrigue
To come back together and then part again
A wave
A dance
That allows that space to grow
That doesn’t break under its own impermanence
It takes and gives, time

[old, found in small all caps on the back of a piece of paper]

if it was so fragile
it could break
that easily
was it worth 
preserving
you + me?

a spider's web
makes a beautiful seam
but
relies on the light
to ever be seen

pictures
of you
served up
to me
on a 
platter
daintily

it's all
in my
head
this I
can
see

so 
why
do I
feel
so
extreme

               (ly
uncomfortable
when she
pulls my chain

melting when
you say my name
will anything
ever change?
it has to - 
nothing 
stays
the
same)

everywhere every second people's hearts are breaking

can you hear them? It's the crunch of stepping on tiny white beach shells

lives being fractured like pieces of glass, sudden shards from a pane that moments ago

you could see through

sense breaks down like that. reality so clearly a mirage there comes a moment

when we all just hit a wall. not metaphorically - face first

bloody nose glasses broken into two.

and then we try to do everything we can, we put on our coats

bundle up and rush over to those on the periphery of the shock

alone in their apartments even if (what was the word Joris used?) calm about things

things like suicide, at this age, Joris says, and you don't know if he means that twenty-four is young

or twenty-four is old. maybe both.

it's the biggest kind of exhale

like all the breath in your stomach, in your body, that has ever passed through your lungs

pushed out and piling up into a cavern of the earth

the breath is creating an ocean

with waves like my hand in the bathtub rocking

just because I do not hold this hurt always

just because it was the kindest thing to leave

doesn't mean I don't hold such a sadness for the ending.