My apologies.
I am not that special,
nor am I unreplaceable—
a twig-like existence, swathed in cellophane,
happed under the cold waters,
rippling from the first drop
whose source is something
I can never know.

It's late spring now—
time for bees to buzz around,
for the winds to breeze warm specks of dust and flow,
for birds to fly unfettered,
and Deer and cows to graze undeterred—
the lives of whom
I can never know.

Complex, wimpled words weave fantasies,
cloaked in mantled gazes of the spotlight.
But I remain a spectator
on the sidelines of this dream,
just floating and bubbling away.
It could've been fun,
has been dreary,
or will be fleetingly hollow—
I can never know.

A flightless songster, who never learned to fly
but only sing in derivatives.
Unfulfilled and uncertain,
a stale and trite narrative of life.
Someone faint and transient,
who always dreams of the greener grass
on the other side—
a place I didn’t know I left behind.

Now I look back,
to where it all began,
little by little,
moving past the point
of where I am, was, and will be.
Except this time,
I can and will know
the end and reason
for this wistful season—

For I have lived through it before.

The bitter taste of coffee lingers,

and it stayed there hence.

Though. Here I am, still.

6 Years to finish

The bitterness that coffee

gave me.

A flavor I forgot.

A taste I now think,

is the same as all other coffee

I drink every day.

The lights are blinding.
Glaring shines that pierce
my blurring view

My eyes are blinding.
Missing obvious hints sprinkled
along clear-cut hues

My ears are ringing.
Blaring warnings whispered
through the noise of your silence.

My heart is blinding.
Drowning in raveled knots
of hope misconstrued

The lights are blinding.
Seeing nothing of value
within the trust I gave you

Tears don't fall
Simply for pain.
A bright light blinds
Even the clearest
Of eyes.

Whites plucked
Does not conform.
The blackened spots
Even the darkest
Of lives.

Let it be known, be a knot in the records of old, that I have never existed in these planar woven threads of nonexistence. In this moment, as I stand on the threshold between memory and oblivion, it is my deepest desire, my twisted adoration and immolation from self-loathing, to be remembered. Yet forgotten in that very same breath, I wish for nothing more. To be a ghost to those who knew me, to those who never will.

Six seconds. A peak of wrath I never thought I could reach. Fleeting moments of blinded redness and tunneled thoughts that I may make mistakes with impudence. Oh, how I would love to throw myself off the cliffs for the granted clarity thereafter. By a reason so meager and inconsequential, I lost respect for him whom I truly knew since birth and him who lived my life; for six seconds I did not know who I was.

Six seconds to unmake everything I was and everything I thought I could be. An instance that cracked the thin veneer of who I’ve been pretending to be my whole life - a good person. I wish I could have turned away but didn’t. Six seconds where time itself turned inward, coiling around my thoughts, suffocating reason. The world narrowed, all else fell away, and in the tunnel of my own making, I became him-the stranger who wears my face but speaks in unfamiliar tones I could never have spoken.

Now, as I stand on the precipice, watching the remnants of my own actions reflecting from the void. A mirror of who I was and who I might become, I am left with a question I cannot answer. Who am I, truly? Am I the one who lived a life of restraint, holding back the tempestuous intrusive impulses? Or am I the one who let it loose? The one who errs perpetually without fail.

I don’t know. Perhaps I never will. Perhaps the only truth is that I am all of them—the calm and the storm, the builder and the destroyer, the one who remembers and the one who wishes to be forgotten. He is all made of these moments, these fragments of time that shape him, whether I like it or not.

Six seconds. That’s all it takes and all it took. To lose. And when those six seconds return—and I know they will—I will stand at the edge once more, thinking maybe six seconds is enough to catch myself instead.