I can’t breathe,
Pressed down by the weight
Of meticulously staying
The same.

It’s a hammer
Coming down on me
It never stops.
A cycle, it never stops.

How can you stand it?
The mindless mundanity
Dragging us down in
A haze, eyes wide open.

“Hello, old friend.”
The lines in his face
are streams of white sand
Falling through the hourglass.
“It’s been a while.”
He says to me
But we both know
That he never left.
We walk together
On the worn path.
He holds my hand
Not in comfort,
But to drag me forward.
He’s a swift current.
He’s a companion,
Traveling by my side.
He’s an ocean,
The eternal and endless tide.

As I breathe out, you breathe in.
As I breathe in, you exhale
And I watch as the breeze
Sweeps past me,
Tickling my face and
Ruffling my hair like
A loving father.
You’ve watched me grow
Watched as I cried and you thundered
A cacophony of sobbing
And shared rivulets
Of trickling water.
You’ve watched as my heart
Grew colder while winter
Crept in like a chill burrows
Inside your bones.
Skeletal trees littered the streets.
But then,
But then you watched my eyes light up
In wonder of the snow drifting
Down, a gentle blanket resting
On the dead like a peaceful burial.
A solemn rest.
And when the sun held
On to the day like a lover
Reluctant to let go.
When the buds grew again
And the world woke up
From its enchanted sleep,
You watched me, you watched
As I stretched my arms
To meet the sky.
You watched me stand
Just tall enough
To graze the clouds.

𝘞𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘴𝘩
I sigh as I breathe again,
Finally, I finally
Made it out.
Made it through.
The storm’s behind me
And even if
I see another one brew
I know
I 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 what I can do.
That I can do
Everything.

It’s like a stone
Being added
To the weight
On your back
And then
And then it just breaks.

It’s like when
As a kid
You would wave
Around the bubble wand
And watch it stretch
And strain
And then
And then it just pops.

It’s like running
Until you can’t anymore
Until you’re on
The side of the road
And you can’t breathe
Because knives
Are slicing
Into your lungs.

It’s laying on your bed
Never wanting to get up.

It’s this.

I am surprised
That I
Don’t make whirring sounds
Like a computer come to life
Because I
Didn’t see my life
Flash before my eyes
When we crashed and
I haven’t cried
At all and I know
That I should’ve that I should’ve that I should’ve
Been scared but I just can’t feel
Anything and that scares me
Most of all.

𝘐’𝘮 𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴
𝘓𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘮𝘢𝘯
𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘴
𝘈𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘴
𝘈𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥
𝙎𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘴.

we fall, we run, we chase, we hide
make plans and make believes
we force our roots to ignore the cycles of decay
we fill our bodies with rush and dismay
we love and we are ready to die all
the symbolic deaths that ignore the traffic lights
just to just to just to just to
avoid the unbearable pain of being alive