I wish things had gone differently
That I’d no longer feel lonely
But that ringing in my ear
Oh is it killing me my dear

And why is the silence so loud
As sharp as noise heard in a crowd
Here staring blankly at the wall
I wonder, why can’t I be whole

The answers I have no yet found
To these questions stuck in my mind
Or maybe it’s that I am blind
And to all ‘ them I’ll remain bound

Oh, you swamp me with charm - get out of my head.
There’s something about you - a warmth - like the comfort of home - that pulls at me.

I study your landscape of attractive surfaces like a star chart - logging my weaknesses - to strengthen my emotional firewall. I WANT you but my “wants” just seem untrustworthy after recent deprivations.

To be honest - I can’t afford you - not now. You’re a delicious pastry - with strings - and I need to cut all my strings.

You’re something younger me would have wanted - before the pandemic, when scandalous thinking was uncomplicated and freedoms taken for granted.

Last year simplified my reality.

Over time, boredom melted me like wax but a new me crossed some threshold of certainty - that to flourish - no, just to survive - I must become more than I am, or find I’m less than I hoped.

In 2019 goals seemed way, way someday things - far off reference points to seek out - like an inchworm. Social details occupied me like an unfocused dementia - there was an unacceptable level of childish thinking.

But now I’m an escapee on the run who won’t be taken back alive. Old attachments must be stripped down and the old world made disposable - if I’m to achieve escape velocity.

a small group of individuals
bound by the intersectionality
of their detriments
meet;

and although alone we stand
in head and heart and hand
together the mind and the heart gave birth
to something each of us forgot were worth:

when we are together, a real person is born
not through the perceptivity of gore and of ****-
but of virtue and strength being visible not
to anyone other than us 3 who forgot.