I look upon the remnants of possible lovers and romantic interests like an architect looks upon blueprints. The ones that got away, the rejected and ignored, the ones I was too distant to carry on. Like all things we long for the unseen, the unfinished grasps us like hot wax and sticks to the skin. I find my desperate mind digging through old facebook messages like a survivor returning to the rubble. Why do I flee to dead cities? Return to a room without a roof when a downpour abates me. Like all things in life I find myself stuck on the incomplete, unable to focus on my work, finish my art or grow beyond the child I seem desperate to hold onto. My failed loves are another marionette without an arm, another unfinished chapter I can write and rewrite the end to without setting down. I look upon a stage of light hearted chemistry, a back and forth laid bare in texts, like the out of date actor who’s part was replaced I’ll rewatch it unable to change.

Open space is fearful, the blank page leaves me shaken, an empty canvas is a sight I cannot bare. Like open waters I fear I’ll drown before I make it to dry land, so afraid of swimming I will burrow my feet into well trodden sand and shelter under trees long since dead. I will wither away on my island of bones, looking through half finished love affairs and messages that have lost all meaning. If I can just tread my feet in the waters below I can finally set this island ablaze. Burn away the rotten skin that ails me so and watch the credits role on my final goodbye. But the water thickens like concrete ahead and the waves form a wall in my wake. I’m not ready to take the step, to let unfinished words be nothing more. When I’m finally ready to bury the page, I will wade through the waters to shore.

We turn the volume down on the world when we look at it through a closed window. Seeing the wind blow the trees but with no impact. Watching a car go by with only an echo of the sound it makes. I sit up late at night, open my window and see the world animate before me. The silent street hums with the sound of rustling trees, a faint and undetermined buzzing rings. In the distance I can hear shouts from some hard to pin down location. A man walks through the street, a minor character on his way to a different story. A car drives by, the headlights shine lighting previously hidden front gardens and bouncing off street signs, twisting how the shadows dance. A few homes are illuminated on the inside, others are not. Each one contains a world, they have the world on mute as I do. What a strange power we have, to be able to pause the world, lock our doors and close our curtains, turning it off till we feel the need to return. Each house I can see from my window has a back garden that I have never seen, the chances are I won’t. Each door bursts at the seams with a story to tell, each garden holds memories painted onto its walls. A fox walks through the street stopping in the middle of the road, no one else is here but the fox and me looking on. A simple scene of sentimentality plays out, this moment is mine. The fox runs away startled by some noise I can’t perceive, we shared a moment he wasn’t aware of and that I don’t yet understand the meaning of but it all falls into place. Like patterns on a tapestry I feel more and more that my moments are connecting, that with each day the muted sensation that I dared to carry with me when I left the world on pause for so long is fading. I feel the cold of the windows glass, the breeze of the cold air on my skin, my feet against the window ledge I’m propped up on. It all feels real now, I’m becoming aware of how aware I’ve become. I feel I am finding myself present in life for the first time, my actions are felt while I act them. I breath in and enjoy the exhale. This is me at 3.36am, Tuesday 29th May, 2018. I hope I don’t forget you when I return again in the morning.

Like perfectly imperfect polaroids, I lay flicking through my memories. The bad, the good and everything in between, I longingly ruminate on them all in a desperate attempt to escape the now. I lovingly look upon toxic relationships as romantic affections, envy my depressed self of eighteen and miss friends I know I have outgrown. I am addicted to the past, or rather I’m addicted to remembering, the bad is good and the now is forgotten. I live in memories when I need to sleep, and sleep away the tomorrow. Brick up the future and run back down the escalator, who’s forward motion is too strong for me to beat. I am tired of the fight and it shows, on a face with blood shot eyes like vains of lava and skin dry and cracked like old wallpaper on a crumpling house. I feel weak in my inability to stop my escape, like a prisoner I am trapped in a body unwilling to outgrow the past and desperate to find purpose in replaying the vhs tapes of nostalgia. But this movie hasn’t changed. It’s as flawed as before and I am only more flawed with every rerun. I wish I could burn these old Polaroid’s, but I am in an ocean, the last thing I have is fire.

Here I am again.
Same place I always find you, same place time always finds me.
Alone at night.
Why is it time never slows when I'm high, happy, intoxicated or just content?
Why is it the small threads that piece together the matter of my time never thin out and elongate in those moments?
Because I'm laying here now, having realised a day has passed, an eventful day at that, one that I'll probably think about once or twice a year from now. But not once, not for a split second, did it slow down for me.
I didn't have that moment, when 5 minutes stretch into the length of an hour, I didn't have that moment when the floor sinks from below me and I feel the world starring back at me. Because that only happens at night, when I'm alone and the only one starring back at me is me.
Because when the lights are off and all the noise is gone, my head gets loud again, like a petulant child deprived of a toy for too long my mind begins to tantrum. Demanding I sink into waves of worry and self doubt, it makes me analyse the details of the day I've lived. But see my mind isn't a reviewer, it doesn't point out the pros and cons, highlight the parts worth keeps. No, my mind is a critic with only impossible goals and cynical pasimism to offer. I had a good day today, at least I thought I did.

Like the smoke blown from each puff of your cigarette, we dance in the air being left to the guidance of the wind. Our journey is unpredictable, perhaps the only thing in my life not subject to my incessant planning and worry, you are the dancing flame the only real source of light here. The only warth that dances among the icey hallways and hollow rooms of my life.
There is no predictability in the wind. No known destination or definitive end. It scares me, you scare me, as I look into your eyes as we soar through the air and I realise you may be the one thing I truly could have no control over.
The side of me that guards my true self in a gated cell is terrified. Terrified that the walls it has built to keep my true self away from the life and person it wants to be may come crashing down from a simple blow of your mighty breath or a bat of your infinity eyes.
I've lived my life being scared of the wind, running from the outside avoiding open space, lest my hair be ruined or my well kept shirt be moved around but lately I haven't cared about that so much. Lately I hang out of my bedroom window and imagine your solo dance when I'm not around. You look majestic even though you'd curse me for saying so.
But I can feel you slipping away now, as the toll of bad timing and past trauma halt us like closed doors and building walls. I can see you slipping into just another status on my screen in three months time, wondering why the wind doesn't blow here anymore.
A random conversation asking how the others life has been before disappearing into our own uniquely different hells again.
Maybe that's how it was always supposed to go, maybe we were never a flame or raging fire, a great pyre lite to light up the night. Perhaps we were a firework, a moment of ethereal beauty revealing what the night could have been but never is in endless shadow.
We put on a good show, with terrified eyes and tender hands we exploded in a canvas of colour and energy.
I danced in the wind but for a second and I wouldn't trade the second for the night.

We meet here again.
In a day of nothing and nowhere, I have remained here all day, yet now you appear.
The angry mob coalescing in my head, asking how I have wasted the day, chastising   me, a child who doesn't know any better.
But I do know better, we have had this argument before you and I, perhaps it was years, perhaps just weeks. I'm 21 now and my mind is still as vicious as it was when I was 18. Will I have these thoughts when I'm 60? Are we always unwilling roommates to an insatiable in-complacency? What do I gain from the constant chatter, the angry noise, the self hate. Because if it had something to offer I feel by now it would have happened. Instead I carry you, my back sore and legs weak, I climb mountains and valleys knowing I will be attacked again each night. Is that life? Is it all just contradiction constantly fighting itself like a snake biting its own tail? Is this the hard truth that everyone seems too scared to speak, the one we sweep under the rug through alcohol  and drug abuse, just trying to get a soundless night? See the more I think about it the more confused I become. Without this duality, this mind who points out my failings while offering no help. Would I be complacent, would compliantly work? Since I turned 18 I've been in a constant state of worry, worry about my future, about my place in the world, about what the old man at the bus stop is thinking when he looks at me. It's a pervasive worry that seeps in and poisons any fresh water I try to drink, where I find good times and joy it is the stranger in the corner reminding me I'm not safe. And I wonder how life would be without it, see I think of it as a curse, as the devil on my back but where would I be without it? Would I be happy to lay where I lay now as I write? This same spot I've found myself nearly every night, would I be happy to sink into the floor boards of my home and exist for the rest of my days? I don't know, I don't know if this dread, this anger, this hateful mind. Is the only thing saving me from painting myself into the same four walls that have cages me for the 21 years of existence I possess. But what do I know, this is just another aimless thought that goes nowhere but digs deep into the pit of my stomach, instilling that existential fear inside of me that I mentioned. Another day wasted, you should remember that.

Was I born with cracks in my foundations?
Chips and dents on my skin that expose it for the cheap knock off material I am built with.
Like off brand toys and faulty electronics my joints loosen and my capacity to function fail at the slightest of pressure.
My cracked and sanded down skin letting all who approach know that I am not a premium person, that I am not worth the price of admission to get to know.
My arms shake and composure fails at the most simple of tasks, like a battery that constantly needs to be on charge I sit and stare at the walls of my room as the list of current tasks mount up and I know I am not good enough to complete the things I was made for.
Off brand person of faulty parts, flaking skin and breaking arms of a person poorly built, of a tool unfit to fill the task it was created.
Do not take pity on my poor design, pay out a price to let me shine, I will only further my disappointment claims "I am destined for failure I warned you it would be this way"
So I tell all now before inviting me in, you see the cracks in my porcelain skin. I am not a damaged and beautiful soul. I've not dealt with hardship and been made whole. I'm a faulty, poorly made broken thing, take heed when my loose parts and damaged body come into frame and move over to a person made to last.