This empty road leads on to the horizon
where the ground rises to meet the sky,
Becoming lost in his twinkling star-eyes,
secure within his encompassing embrace.
Or
The sky lays slowly into the Earth’s comforting
Arms and hills and scented colors of spring,
Burying his face, drowning in a lovers trance,
Nuzzling as close as possible,
But only allowed to truly touch
at the ever-shifting horizon
the end of human perception.

Your smile is one thing
that can turn darkness to light
let your smile shine out

Numb.
I cannot feel the sunburn on my back.
I cannot feel pain as I glide the blade against my skin.
I no longer feel the spark in my heart.

My head is constantly crowded with nonsense.
All I can see is a little red-headed boy.
He plays with blocks in a sepia-toned room.
I know he is not real.
I have never seen him before, but I know this imagery all too well.
He comes from a photograph from long ago.
He is my reality now.

He lays on the carpet tinted a light green.
He is stacking blocks with different letters on them.
I feel as if I should pay attention to their order.
Is he trying to tell me something?
The letters are blurry, as if I am reading without my glasses.
What could this boy be trying to tell me?
I lean in closer when his image ripples away as if this photograph was dipped into a chemical bath.
Reaching out my hand, I cannot touch him.
I remember he is just a hallucination.
Reality hits me aggressively.

I'm sitting on my bedroom floor, blade in my hand when my phone lights up.
Grabbing my phone, I let the blade fall.
I can feel my heart pound for the first time in months.
I am hoping to hear from a friend.
Instead, a game is inviting me to come back and play.
I know it now.

I am alone.

I am alone with my thoughts and with this boy who isn't real.
I crave human interaction.
I look at the blade on the floor.
I look at my skin tinted red.
I crave being in the same sepia photograph as that boy.
I wouldn't be alone.
I wouldn't be red.
But I only know one way to travel back to him.
I pick up the blade once more and press it hard into my skin.

Numb.
I cannot feel the sunburn on my back.
I cannot feel pain as I glide the blade against my skin.
I no longer feel the spark in my heart.

I cannot stand to be alone anymore.

I thought I could stave off the insanity
Because we ended so well
But I drove through a storm
And I became one

I talked to you
Out loud
Pretended you were still sitting beside me
Launched a conversation that I only wanted to have with you.

I told you
Everything.

I wept
Openly

I confessed
I begged
I reminisced

“How ironic,”
I said at one point in the one sided conversation
“That we should work together better than we ever have now it’s over.”

And I smiled bitterly
And sobbed.

I knew what you’d say,
I could almost hear the deep sounds of your voice
Oh how I craved them.

‘Don’t call.’
The still sane part of me whispered.
‘Let him let you go’.

So I told his ghost.
That I missed him.
How hard it was, him being the only one I wanted to talk to about it.
I told him that I knew he was on the road to moving on from me
That he was already well down the path of discovery
And that he’s soon figure out
That he could do so much better
Than me.
That the evidence was
I was no longer a priority, did he notice?
He forgot me, for long stretches.
I am both happy and heart broken about it.

Did he not remember how I feared being forgotten.

I told his ghost it was okay he was already forgetting.
That the part of me that loves him cleanly
Knew this was the right way to go.
I told his ghost the part that loved him selfishly
Was the part hurting the most
How it protested the forgetting
And begged me to call him.
To return to him.
“I’m still so in love with you”
I cried into the night.

Ah and this is where the insanity sets in
The Unmet expectations
The guessing

I love you.
But I can’t keep doing this to you.
I can’t keep calling you back to me.

So watch me go
Feel my rain, my thunder
And then forget as I drift away
Like a passing storm