lethe

Do you ever picture my lips on someone else's? Do you think of her? Whoever she is? Does the thought of me with someone else ever kill you, because it kills me sometimes. Does any of this kill you like it kills me?

"I just... I saw the way you look at her." "I saw the way you were looking at her." "I could tell by the way you look at her." "I could see it in your eyes - you like her." Why is it that my eyes can tell who I love when even my heart can't? Everyone knows how I feel; everyone except for me.

Sometimes I miss my sixteen-year-old heart, with its innocent airport terminals, filled with constant arrivals and departures, beginnings and ends. There are times I miss the sound of your voice as it reverberates through the gate. I watched you leave, the plane taking off, and already I was picturing your return -- bursting through the gate, dropping the handles of your suitcase, rushing towards me before your lips fall into mine effortlessly. Except, this never happened. I'm sorry you missed your flight back to me. But right now my plane is boarding and I'm on my way out.

I don't think this is what I want, but this isn't what I don't want either. It's something, but I want more, just not in the way that you want more. This was fun at first -- I came back each time giddy, butterflies blooming, excited for the next time I would get to see you. But now moths are eating away at what's left of my heart and I'm bored again. Your hands aren't daring enough, aren't willing to set my skin on fire and give it the warmth it craves. Our bodies tangle themselves together but I'm itching to get out of my skin far too much to actually enjoy anything. My heart wanders through the tunnels of my mind, desperate to find the answer to these feelings that aren't something but aren't nothing. I want someone to fight for me, but that someone isn't you.

It started off simple. She wandered in, drunk, innocent enough. And then she got closer. She climbed into my bed, head on my shoulder, closer than ever before. I didn't take me long to realize her intentions. She had a mission, one she intended to accomplish. She asked to turn off the lights for "ambiance." Ambient it was. She told me that we're all going to die; that was her whole speech. We're going to die someday, so we should feel things now. "Do you want to feel it?" I just looked at her. "Do you want to kiss me?" I knew what she was doing, but I couldn't resist. Why couldn't I resist her? Because I knew I didn't want to. "Only if you want to kiss me," I replied. It wasn't the first time, but it was the best time. I'm now I'm stuck somewhere in-between fighting to remember and trying to forget it.

I want to show up at your doorstep and kiss you. That's it. Because I get excited to see you, and every time I do, my heart shifts between beating way too fast and not wanting to beat at all. I'm not used to going slow, taking my time, I'm too stuck in a ready-set-go. I can't just show up and kiss you whenever I want. Maybe it's all as new to me as it is to you. I want to dip my toes in, but I don't want to dive in. The water is too cold.

"Have you ever thought about what you want?" She asks. I shake my head. "Don't think about them, don't think about what they want - What do you want?" I shrugged my shoulders and simply gave a sly smile because I know what I want, I have all along. I'm just too afraid to say it.

I wanted to cry, so I took some Advil PM and stumbled into your room instead. While my hands were laced with yours I fought off the thought of my lips on hers and how different it felt this time than all the rest - not necessarily feelings, but there was something more there. The way she bit my lip, the darkened room, the confession of a drunken "crush." It's all enough to make me scream. She curled herself into my lap, like a snake getting a little too comfortable around its prey just before it's about to strike. And oh, did she strike, her venom poisoned my bloodstream the very second her lips landed on mine She came in here with a mission, one she accomplished. I don't know whether to be sad about this or impressed; for this will never happen again.

It's delicate. More than platonic and less than romantic.

Gracious gulps from glacial glasses of water. Anxious forks frolicking across a plate. The passing hours documented and bolded, 24 is the magic number. My body is left with ravenous cues I should attend to. But the pain and the weight and the steep slope I am sliding down will never be enough for me, just as I will never be enough for you. It's been so long since I've done this, but maybe it's time to get back on track, to the days where my limbs were lithe and my mind was fixated at maintaining the double digits occupying my scale; back to the restless hours of a hunger I refused to listen to, to the noise in my head cancelling everything around me and the sickening delight of my d    o w      n   w        a     r        d  s            p   i        r a         l to bon...

Drunk words are sober thoughts, but what about drunk thoughts? I wanted to be left alone but now I can't decide which is worse - being surrounded by people or being completely alone. If I'm surrounded by people I have to fake it, but if I'm alone I could barely keep it together. It's 11:38 pm and I'm alone for yet another night, biting back the sobs in my chest and picking at wounds that aren't even there.

It's 1:34 am. I hate it when I feel compelled to announce the time of which I am writing a post, as if it is significant, but perhaps it is... at least, this time it feels relevant. For it is the lonely hour - the infamous hour in which I feel that I am the only human in the world, despite the fact that my roommate and a friend are sleeping in a bed mere feet away from me and my trusty companion, my laptop. I wish I could say that I'm dramatically writing this in loopy handwriting in my notebook that I'm determined to fill, but alas, typing just feels like a more rhythmic, cathartic way to express my feelings. Yesterday felt weird, in one of the worst, most familiar ways possible - the inevitable crash that comes after riding for too long on the shaky waves of my subconscious. I felt oddly out of my body, as if I were a ghost floating above the sidewalk leading to the dining hall, even worse navigating the labyrinth of tables with a sparse plate of food. "I noticed...

Softly at night, I listen to the door. The sound, going in, going out. The effortless push, and the resistance of pull. How much easier it is to leave, than to be let in.

five whole days and I am okay.

Sparkling heels on wet cobblestones. A clock tower looming in the distance. I weave through the side streets, warm light bouncing around, laughter filling the night. For once, I am not fearful of the night. And then there I am - standing on a set of stairs, I'm wearing tulle dusted with glitter, my hand gripping the curving railing. I stare at my hands, stare at my feet, toenails flawlessly polished, everything looks so real. Is it real? There are people I don't recognize, but then there's you - the one familiar face in a crowd of strangers. And suddenly, I understand.

There I go again. I hate that I do this. I just get so excited. I wait for something good to happen. But it never does. I get too excited for my own good. I feel so stupid. Thinking this was it. I really thought this was it. But it wasn't, it never is. I'm sorry that I'm like this. I won't ever be again.

I wish I could remember last night as well as I had initially hoped. I barely remember anything and it scares me. Nothing ever goes the way I plan, so maybe I should just stop planning. But the second her body came in contact with mine, dangerously close, hands mindlessly through my hair, everything inside of me was on fire and I needed to get out. The fire burned all the way down my throat and continued to burn throughout the night. It was 7:30 and I was doomed, there was no going back after that first shot, a huge gulp of rubbing alcohol, plastic water bottle crushing beneath my fingertips. They left me alone and I have never felt lonelier. I wanted to drunk cry, to scream, to let it all out in the sanctuary I've created here, but none of that happened. Instead, I ended up drunk worrying about everything and everyone except for myself. I thought drunk crying was what I needed, but maybe I need a sober cry. I wanted to stop feeling, but maybe I need to feel everything I...

Happy National Poetry Month! Like I've done in the past, I'll be following  daily prompts . Enjoy. - 4. Make a list of seven words that have the same vowel sounds (like bee, treat, pepperoni, eagle ) and use them in a repetitive way throughout a poem.  -  late, waiting, eight, fate, date, they, say  Time was never my friend and I'm always late. Late nights spent always in waiting; Waiting for some kind of fate; "Fate" was my excuse for everything, they constantly laughed at my superstitions, eight was the magic number, constantly the date on the calendar that I searched for,  always the lucky number. They say there is no such thing as fate, but how else do you explain us?

I laugh, "I almost kissed you that night." And I really wanted to. "I didn't want my first kiss to be with someone while they're drunk," she explains, "I don't care about my second, or third kiss, but not my first kiss." I bite my tongue from the response overly eager to slip out, "Then go have your first kiss so I could finally kiss you." I wish I would've kissed you then - not that one drunken night, but a sober one spent in your room, when my hair matched my sweater and my hand found itself laced in yours, bound by invisible forces. A mingling of nervous and sweaty palms and cheeks blushing beneath my makeup. I'd stare at the butterflies on your walls and relate them to the ones breaking free in my stomach. I wish I would've kissed you then so I wouldn't be thinking about it now, all when it's too late.

Happy National Poetry Month! Like I've done in the past, I'll be following  daily prompts . Enjoy. - 3.  Write a poem that is really a love letter to an old flame. To make sure it’s doesn’t slip into sappy, make sure one or more of these words are in the poem : dung beetle, politician, nuclear, exoskeleton, oceanography, pompadour, toilet.  -  I studied oceanography in your eyes in hopes of finding love hidden  beneath  your capricious waves.  Instead, I dove into an abyss with no idea of where I would end up. But somewhere underneath the sea foam surrounding me, deep down in the void of navy nothingness, I found a cove to call my own. I call this place home, a temporary paradise in the depths.  There is no "lost" here, only a constant finding, new discoveries to be admired and fawned over.  I call this place mine, even though I am not yours. 

Happy National Poetry Month! Like I've done in the past, I'll be following  daily prompts . Enjoy. - 2. Write a poem about a superhero coming to your house and confronting you about something. Somewhere in the poem, you have to state what  your  superpower is.  - It wasn't a gift or a blessing, it was a curse. An unusable superpower, unhelpful and not useful.  Superman can save the world a thousand and one times. Wonder Woman can make anyone tell the truth with the help of a magic lasso. Batman saves the city in the darkness of the night. But me? All I have is constant empathy. I thought empathy would come in handy - the ability to replicate other's feelings?  That sounds like a savior for certain situations. Instead, I'm left flailing and constantly uncertain of what I really feel.  So whenever she teleports over, my emotions dissolve and become one with hers. Whenever she leaves, I fall in love all over again, and she'll never e...

I want my life to go back to normal, but I'm not sure that's possible now. Maybe I'm not meant to live a normal life, or maybe I need to create a new normal -- maybe this hell is the new normal. I just know that right now is bad, with glimpses of good that sneak out to poke me, to remind me that life isn't all that bad, but it also isn't all that good. It's more bad than good. Maybe that's the new normal and I'll just have to get used to the idea that happiness isn't for me, that it isn't a permanent state of being for me, that I don't deserve it like I used to think I would by now. The truth is that's all I care about -- happiness. I don't care about the money, or popularity, or having nice things, or a large house, or any of those things because happiness is all I want. Maybe I'd even sell what little is left of my soul for it. Maybe I already have. There are so many "maybes," too many for my liking but there are fe...

She asked me what I knew about the concept of rewards in psychology and I admitted I didn't know much. "Well, there are rewards that come from a certain behavior, like training a dog - they know if they sit when told, they'll get a treat. But then there are rewards that come at random - that's gambling. You know if you sit long enough pulling the lever of a slot machine, or at that blackjack table, eventually, you'll win," I nodded along, unsure of where she was going with this. "That's what's happening here - you know that you'll wait and wait and wait and sooner or later, you'll get your reward," Suddenly it was making sense. "So you'll wait and you'll get a reward and then be anxiously looking forward to your next fix." I took this in, reflecting on my feelings the past few months, hell, the past few years. "What you're saying is... I'm gambling with my heart." "Yes, you know you'll...

Happy National Poetry Month! Like I've done in the past, I'll be following daily prompts . Enjoy. - 1.  Grab the closest book. Go to page 29. Write down 10 words that catch your eye. Use 7 of words in a poem. For extra credit, have 4 of them appear at the end of a line.  -  garden, lungs, lipstick, getaway, kisses, secretly, forget, ache, coffee, loves - "Please don't forget me."  I think about the possibilities- Mornings spent in a garden,  one untouched from my poisonous fingertips.  Lipstick staining the rim of my mug, bitter coffee on my tongue, my mouth sweetened by your kisses, my heart softened with an ache when I remember than I am yours and you are mine, something I never want to forget.  How could I forget? In the imaginary getaway of my mind, it's you and I  against the world, but in my reality,  there is no such thing. Instead, my heart and lungs are a desert, desperate to be watered by you, because...

Six days at home and I forget how to function. Sometimes I say I want to go home and I'm not sure where I'm talking about anymore. Am I talking about the physical residence I lived in for sixteen years? Do I mean the room I've shared with another human being for the last six months? Or that condo at the beach we occupied for less than a week? How about the camper in the creepy campsite? Maybe it's the room I stayed in while visiting Florida, an air mattress and some charged crystals I'll never see again. I attach "home" to too many places, but the label belongs to one person and always has. There's no use not being candid about feelings - enough of my "I don't want to get hurt"-bullshit. I am going to get hurt because that's life and I've been hurt before, I'll be hurt again, but I will survive. So many feelings occupy my heart, some are just ghosts passing through, lightly knocking things over, making some areas colder ...