Don't look at me.
Don't see that I am raw with something like loss
Like the loss of something that
I haven't ever had.
Don't look over here
And see tears in my eyes
Because I don't know why they are here
And I want them gone.
Rarely
Do people show me a flipped image
Of how empty I feel.
Mostly I can forget.
I know you are like me.
To the very core of you
You light up when you love somebody.
And from the shadows I
Have caught some sunlight on the way by
And it is charring my skin.
It bubbles and blisters
Red and white
And I feel so ugly I hold my breath.
Did I lose that?
Did I have that?
It's not envy,
Not of either of you.
It's too pure for that.
Has too much surrender,
Too much grief.
It is simply that
Right now
I want to shrink into this wall
Like a smudge.
Maybe if I could just be so insubstantial,
Maybe I could be the smoke you exhale,
Pretty against the stars,
Vitriolic in your lungs,
And that
Temporary.
I wish you all
Could forget me like a sigh,
Like a sigh on a frigid night that shows white
For a moment
And then dissipates.
I wish I could forget me like that.
I don't understand
The tears in me tonight.
They've been rising for a while,
All quiet and cold.
Now they're everywhere,
In my veins and in my fingertips
Making them heavy on the keys.
They are slowing me down,
Weighted and cold as
Hell
And I know I can't be the one
To turn to you and let them flood your moonlit heart.
I am freezing them, bit by bit,
To keep them here.
What kind of person would I be
If I were to cut through your haze of happy
And tell you I need you now?
And moreover
That I am drowning
Because I saw somebody who got saved.
No,
No I am not terrible that way.
I am terrible
This
Way.
I would sink to the floor
But it takes more energy
Than I want to expend
And there is a sort of smugness in restraint.
I learned it last year,
That if you try for long enough not to cry
The crushing pressure becomes almost a relaxation,
A thick, noxious mist that you can rest your weight upon and succumb to.
My grief tastes like giving up.
And I always say to the world
That I do it out of spite,
That I do it so that I hurt me before it does.
But it's just not true.
Giving up is a disease,
And it's killing me.
I have borne my wrists to the bloodthirsty,
Unsurprised at their zeal
When they bit down hard.
Something about a passive face
Makes me feel like I've kept something
Of myself
Even as I lost everything else.
What kind of awful would I be
If I asked for comfort now?
No,
I have weathered many silent storms
And frozen many tears
Calm- a sick calm that feels like pitch in your lungs- and clear as glass,
So thick you can't see through it anymore.
There's nothing to see to.
That is the secret.
When you break the ice,
There is only blackness.
The only thing you find beyond the tears
Is the place that births them,
And its only purpose is to be
Achingly empty.