Caroline

I severed my affair with the dark when I realized that these hazy dreams have blurred into nightmares. Even the smoke of a well-lit secret can’t keep away the ghosts from my mind. Why does the present seem so far away? The past isn’t supposed to be haunting, but I guess God forgot about me when he handed out forget-me-now pills. Sometimes, when the moon masks its glow, I get down to the knees and beg for demons to take over the shadows of my mind — at least they wear their sins on their sleeves. People ask me who I am, but I forget what I am doing and remember my mistakes instead. People should really just leave me alone. Stop trying to romanticize nostalgia; nostalgia would be a gift compared to what bleeds through me. These marks are supposed to be battlescars, so why do they seem like tallies of how static my life has become? There is nothing to save me, but I don’t want to ask to be saved. When did truth become a fluid lie, and when did these blonde wisps curl into jaded piercings? Eighteen lights blow years into the night, but I only see eighteen lightyears until some door opens, and a hand grasps mine, and I hear a voice say “Sweet Caroline of mine, your adventure awaits.” But I am not a champion of light, and the nocturnal world has shunned me. Sometimes I beg to return to the honeymoon days, but even I know, as I am blowing out the candles, that I already swallowed the pills that took away nostalgia.

Flicker

What were we? It feels like a flash of a memory. If I was a bit more lucid, I’d think I made you up in my insanity. That era was one of chaos. I was breaking apart, so forgive me if I can’t believe you saw me whole. You had my curiosity; I had your attention. We talked about the world, but how come it felt like I never knew you? I had your lips under the oak tree on a summer picnic blending with autumn leaves. Your friends pressed themselves against the hotel room door until you dispersed them. We lit our matches, winking away the difference of age, and it still brings a smile at the absurdity of distance, when those moments were the opposite of. But this fire ended too soon; the rush to blow out the candle and scurry up three floors before curfew hit is the wind to me now. We flitted between business casual and casual business like nobody’s business. I have been avoiding your consciousness of late; you know I’m leaving, you know you’re staying. Everything ends, but this flicker didn’t just blow away, it burned your name into me. So accept this lighter, and I’ll take the air away on a paper leaf.

 

Sandpaper Arms

Look at you, dancing on your pedestal, trying to seem like you know it all without seeming like you have it all. I see you spilling your guts under hidden text and code names. Accusing people of privilege before looking them in the eye. How can you, when just jeers peer down below? To me, there is no coherence of the lines, nothing that stitches you to your fantasy, and in the end … it’s just abhorrence. Your arms prickle with savagery; can you do anything but tear people apart? I have seen your truths in the glow in the dark nights of silent reconstruction. You observe and analyze but keep denying that you feel. You can’t have the best of both prejudices. Don’t pretend you’re beyond the pervasiveness of human sin, while wondering why all those you beguiled don’t love you beyond your tapestry. Look at you, a tragedy tripping over your own feet. And there is just silent destruction as you fall to those you scorned in your elitist ravaging.

Icarus

Ravines pull you under and shake you down to the earth, with the aspiration of making you more than you are. You fall from your sun flight, and give up your ambitions for the stars. Mother needs you so much closer. Parenthood reeks of Stockholm’s Syndrome, as genealogy weaves trees of requirement into love, writing in gold leaf, “proximity breeds intimacy.” The world quakes as you build rockets to escape, it melts if only to convince you to stay. The gods already forgone their allegiances to the material, and in doing so, have transcended into the divine. Humans are not so easily torn away — for what would they say about the children who did not care? Space distances itself further and further. Soon, all the lights in the sky will be too far away to see, and you will have given up all your dreams for a spinning rock who screams when you leave.

Infection

I see you walking past us, all alone in your self-rightedness. Here we are, hustled together, laughing over our follies. There you are, alone. You trudge back, trying to hold your head up so high, your eyes become blind from the light. But in the darkness, I see the cutting edge of our apathetic hatred; we’re done with you. Please, we have no pity; you thundered through the halls, lording over everyone with your tantalizing portrayals. You fucked them all up, you destructive hurricane with your petty needs stemming from attention seeds. And in the aftermath, you ruined them all. So find yourself a corner, and turn your self-deprecation into change, ‘cause darling we’re not falling for your next disaster.

Severed

I know I must not matter much to you. Which is odd considering…well I guess it must not be a surprise that you do not matter much to me either. You claim all these lofty titles, yet you can’t hold a candle to your words. I have let coal burn me for so long, but no longer. I have been a chameleon, and I have blended my colors to suit your mixture. I am not a secret, god damn you. Slaves hold higher privilege than me, but I will reclaim dignity and aloof my beings. Once more, I will uproot myself and find promise somewhere else. This is just heathen. You are Death, stealing time, but I will be Life, making more. Do not act as if I call treason. My barred gates have grown block after block, slowly. Easily torn down, if noticed early enough. So be gone, and take your manners to the streets. Leave me be, hiding beneath the curtains of torn sheets.

1:1:1

Untitled bones rake in the new year with wishes and kisses. With sovereign hopes, they battle the flesh. What do we remember more? The skin or the skeleton? Dawn waxes the bullet, and the shot takes a lightspeed approach to encircling the world. What do we regret more? The past or the future? The war cries for a surrender, bleaching flags white in the hopes that its suicide would be of some use. Alas, the body burned in more ways than one, as the charred marrow kindled the pores into leather. In that moment, war realized why all the hotlines said that was never the answer, never the solution. What do we want more? To live or to be never wrong?

Gaslighting

There is an abuse that goes beyond recognition, in nail beds that cannot stay steady, that cannot hold still. The taste of undiluted fiction trickles in, as you shift heavy breaths from believing yourself to doubting yourself. Abuse that cannot be found in the throw of a leg or the punch of an arm. It smiles. It hides in lavish gifts, in gaudy promises. It pulls you close, then closer. Denial trips, beyond illusions of hallucinations. A person can be both a poison and its antidote. Double meanings that puts laughter in slow motion. Deciphering becomes exhausting, leaving wrinkles older than anniversaries or birthdays. When you falter, when you fall, is when you shiver into a sliver of understanding. The silver lining is, that at least, now you know.

Peer

i will search through all the envelopes, and use a slightly sharpened knife to slice away the wax seal that refused to let go of the paper. i will open the letter and let the crinkles echo and echo. i will find it empty and i will crash to the ground, while it only falls. i might cry, but i am not sure yet. i haven’t have had enough time to make all my decisions. but i know i will do something grand, something full of gesture, of gusto, of bravery. i will no longer be the hospice, sought in the rain but abandoned in the sun. i will be the tyrant, and i will destroy the dictators with all my will. i will, i will, i say with the resolution of bleeding red ink.

Recall

We paint brushstrokes on the past with the ease of crayons, blurring the lines of truth with wishful thinking. We pinpoint the extremities of our lives if only to prove that we are not drudging the years away in somber lack. Our memories disintegrate with each memorial we celebrate. Our mourning overtake facts, and I too often have called upon lies as evidence. People’s betrayals only ever come as a surprise because we have tricked ourselves, blacking out the red flags they staked, murmuring halos and pedestals that they never asked for. I have come up with a saying to combat the mind’s rustic nostalgia: know everyone, befriend some, love few, trust no one.