If everyone were to agree,
the drive for progress would be gone.

Anytime is a good time to show gratitude

yesterday’s hope is a mystery
walking a hidden line
I hold tight in my throat
with beauty raging in a torrent
below me, tell me when to release
as my faith cascades over
this roaring masquerade

color me the hue of your cigarette ash;

slam broken beer bottles in to my palm

and wipe the blood on an old t-shirt. 

paint me pretty with ***** red lipstick
(stolen from my mother)

and stuff me in to china doll shells. 

you say “this change will be good for you”

i say “this is too fun to stop”

my father says “oh good god, what have you done?”

but darling, let’s not listen to anyone else,

and continue tattooing memories on our skin.”

There is absolutely nothing about these words that will, or should, make me famous.

They are just words – an outpouring that means everything to me, and not a thing to anyone else.

You see, I’m not the only person that has felt as though their insides are barrelling down into a bottomless void. I’m not the only one that feels a tightness around their chest whilst they flail inwardly – cursing at their longing in the face of indifference.

I’m not alone in staring beyond seeing at an inanimate object – echoes of significance attached that only make sense to two people, and one of them doesn’t care anymore.

It’s easy to say that I opened my heart – the hard reality is that the invited slammed the door.

It’s easy to say why me, what did I do, what didn’t I do, I did everything… but it’s not what I did. It’s not what I didn’t do. It’s not who I am. It’s who I never have been.

I don’t fit. I don’t fill the mould. I never met the criteria, I invented my own. I was there at the right time – and I was still there, when it was the wrong time. Still waiting, still fighting, still working, still figuring it out.

Apparently it gets easier. Apparently I will move on. Apparently there are fish, in a sea, and I hear that one of them will be right for me.

I see the logic, I am lucid enough.

But I also see him saying “no”, when I ask if it’s me that he loves.