A raindrop plops onto your lashes
and you blink it away,
it slides down your face
like the tears you should be shedding.
The sky is crying for you,
you have no tears of your own.

Sometimes the world hands you moments.
Quiet moments,
Like lonely late night bus rides,
Where everyone is drooping in their seats
After long days at work.
Like hospital waiting rooms,
Where people are too tense,
Mouths clenched shut,
Only opening their mouths to whisper
Words of prayer.
Like early Sunday mornings,
When family is sleeping in,
And you lie alone
With your thoughts
Your body still too heavy to get out of bed
Like trying to run through water.
These small moments,
These little gifts can be wonderful,
Until the loud silence
Leads your mind to dark places
Filled with the wild hushed voices
You've always tried so hard
to keep untouched and noiseless,
Like you do late buses
Or waiting rooms
Or being awake early Sunday mornings.
But your thoughts drift towards them
And reach through the gaps,
Pulling and tugging at the monsters
And creatures you've tried so hard
To stuff away in the little boxes
In the corners of your brain,
Piled with forgotten toys and old socks
All of them covered in a thick layer of dust.
They've clawed out too quickly
For you to stop the probing fingers,
And suddenly you're trying hard
To stop tears from flowing,
But it's like trying to stop water from flowing
Out the gaps between your fingers,
You have no choice but to wait
Until there's no more water left to flow,
Or the bus ride is over
Or the doctor calls you over
Or you can't wait anymore
And you just have to get up
And go somewhere where the voices can
No longer be heard.

I envy you,
You, who has their future
all planned out
between the pages of the calendar
that’s been hanging on your wall
since December 31st,
changing every year with no delay
because you already know
all the important dates.

I envy you,
You, who has a dream,
the same dream you’ve had
since childhood
that’s changed or been tweaked
maybe once or twice
but that always becomes clearer.

I envy you,
You, who understands yourself
and who knows who ‘you’ are,
who understands your passions
and who knows what you want.

I envy you,
You, who knows what happiness is like,
and who has felt true sadness and despair
only a handful of times,
but who knows how to deal with it
and knows why it comes by.

I envy you,
While I sit here surrounded
by my sadness,
getting a glimpse of joy
maybe once over the weekend
and another if I wake up for sunrise.

While I sit here not knowing
who ‘I’ am
or what I love
or the emotions I feel.

While I sit here
without a dream in mind,
without a goal that I can run toward
Only sitting in a dark empty field
with no calendar in sight
because thinking about the days
that pass makes me feel empty inside.

So instead I sit here
on this bus full of people
that feels so empty and bleak.
While the fog from outside
clings to the windows
and blurs the thoughts in my mind,
thinking about ‘you’
and my envy
so green and so vast
it could be mistaken
for a meadow filled with grass.

I think about how I would
trade my life for yours.
But my mind disapproves
because then I would be
even less like the ‘me’
than I believe myself to be.

I know who I am because of
the emptiness I have
and for now it’s enough
and that’s all I need.

So instead I will sit here
and think of the many reasons why
I envy you.

Zombie
Zombie,
Walking through life
Blindly,
Aimlessly,
Empty
Empty,
Feeling nothing at all,
Mind thoughtless,
Blank,
Like the chalkboards
Rendered useless
By the projector
And the small screen
In your hand.
Don't bother me,
Don't say a word.
It goes in one ear
And out the other.
The passage simplified
By an empty canal,
A boat waiting for your words
To be carried across,
To be left unprocessed.
Staring blankly out the windows
Whizzing,
Unmoving,
Landscape,
Portraits
Of youth outside
Laughing,
Foolish.
You come to me with
Arms wide open,
But
The only arms I want
To hold me are the
Outstretched arms of my warm
Welcoming bed
That will hold me forever
Like the dirt
Embracing the dead
In a coffin,
Like a zombie.

I wanna throw the dinner plates to the floor,
hard so they crack,
pieces shatter and explode,
across the tiles of my flat.
They’ll embed themselves in the wall,
or in the couches, or in skin,
They’ll embed themselves in me,
So I feel the impact, the sting.
The pain would register, I would scream
until I have no voice left to be released.
I would smash down all the others,
and won’t be satisfied until porcelain covers my skin,
glass blankets the floors,
and all the cupboards are empty.
My brain will feel so blank
that I won’t know what else to do but
slowly clean the mess I’ve made.

Darling,
you wear your sadness so well.
I wish it would rain every day so I could constantly witness
the way your cheeks glow with the tears falling from your eyes
or the thunder of your voice as you sob through the night.
I love the way your brain tosses
and turns
and rummages
inside your skull
picking at old threads and littered notes.

I just hate cleaning up after a rampaging storm.