The best way to escape reality without running,
is smiling even though it's obviously fake

People live their lives bound by what they accept as correct & true.
That’s how they define Reality.
But what does it mean to be “correct” or “true”?
Merely vague concepts…
Their Reality may all be a mirage.
Can we consider them to simply be living in their own world..
Shaped by their beliefs?

And the only peace I'll find is in bed falling asleep. Probably dreaming of betters times. My pulse says im alive but my mind is six feet deep. Gaps of absence within a heartbeat, a mix with the silence in the streets. I haven't loved in weeks. And if blood was a river mine would be flooding the banks, overlooking the lands drowning my innocence. Because since when did love or hate make any sense? Is there even a difference between their distance? The world is a beautiful place and I am no longer afraid or are they relevant to their existence? The threads of my soul vibrate to the rhythm of your breath. A constant reminder of what the summer once meant, underneath sentiments and word placements. Because its one thing to be upset, torn and ripped asunder, its another to be whole and put together, but always feeling alone and under the weather. Sleeping isnt exactly sleep if your still wide awake, hoping for a better day to come by. But it doesnt come, and youre stuck singing the same sad songs, praying that the sun would explode, and maybe the light will finally show. Im not empty im just not full, but i love this weather and i love this idea that one day everything will come together. That every thread leads to one another and not everything is lost. not everything is lost, not everything i believed in is gone, because if there's some sort of hope, then maybe there's some sort of reason to live. But this feeling, this rush of emotion that pierces my every pulse, it belongs to someone or something, and ive lost sight of what it was and who it spoke to. Im covering up the ideas that the past is harmful but the future is important, im just trying to find a reason to sleep calmly, that doesnt revolve around you or me.

Maybe this will destroy me and perhaps somethings aren't meant to get better. The summers coming along once again, its burning skin and its welcoming. I never wanted to experience any of this, it feels as if winter is going to last year round and i have no escape in sight, Im falling victim to a rescue turned prison, i can finally see myself getting stronger, a sense of accomplishment i never believed was closer then it was farther. Ive felt lonely these past few months and ive fell farther then i couldve known. The silence echos and the waters are running, the rivers begin flooding the riverbanks of a new found innocence i was told to believe was lost long ago. But here i stand at the edge of my 23rd birthday, still unsure but somehow not so unhappy, i wish i had some sort of reasoning to explain all of this, but perhaps things arent meant to rhyme all the time, they just do and when they dont its nobody's fault not even your own. Because the world is a beautiful place and im no longer afraid, im trying hard to stay above water, im trying even harder to breath, im trying hard to see everything clearly. But im getting there, believe me.

10 cents says scent is the strongest sense.
For now you're just someone who lives in my past tense.
Although none of this makes any sense, these dreams still hold dominance over my residence.
Brilliance abundance of remembrance,  you keep me in bed.
Breathing in nonsense. My mind, an absence.
I'm stuck between the smell and the linger of something that has gone and went.
But it thrives in essence, and chooses to make a mess of all my senses.
Then the snow fell. And the car slid. I'm still overlooking fences.

This isn't a poem.
This isn't a work of art.
This is just a moment of my life.

This evening a girl whom i had recently met confessed something to me, she cupped her hands and looked down at her feet, then slowly tilted her head up a few degrees just enough for my eyes to capture a glimpse of her lips as she spoke. She than said "Youre dangerous..i can tell..aren't you?" To further explain what had happened allow me to backtrack for a moment. A few minutes prior to this we had been talking, and suddenly as per usual upon meeting someone, sometimes even as often as just having a conversation with someone who sparks  my inner interests, she had found herself in contact with the person i become when i speak. I completely dissolve my previous persona and manifest myself in an entirely new personality that seems to have the innate ability to perform human speech at an incredible level. What do i mean? Speech. The humane ability to  vocalize human communication. It is based upon the syntactic combination of lexicals and names that are drawn from very large vocabularies. Speech. Once i start talking i cannot help myself, my words just flow and they seem to always find a way to properly cascade out of my mouth and almost form that of a river. They just stream so precisely as if it were planned however the honesty in the words i choose and the way i speak is something you cannot deny. She asked me questions regarding who i am, what i am,w ** do i want to be. She further asked what do i believe, my interests, my passions, my ideology behind love and hate. I answered each one with the way i have always answered them and with each passing answer, with each passing sentence she began to grow more intrigued almost mesmerized by the way i was able to collect my thoughts so rapidly yet create such a vivid mental picture out of nothing. She then said that this was dangerous, because people like me, we know how to talk, we know how to word the things we want. Were 'persuasive'. Shes right, this is a horrible ability, its both a gift and a curse. To be able to always get what you want but, not me. When it comes down to speaking out for the things and people i want most, i am at a loss for words. All my thought process becomes is sand to water, useless. Just another speck in an endless void waiting for a chance to collect with another grain of sand in the hopes that maybe, ill reach above water level.
In the end, i'm a bird that can soar but becomes far too afraid when he flies too high.
But nothing will ever stop me from perfecting my ability to talk.
i want to create riots in peoples blood as i speak.
I want you to feel something when i speak.
I have a new dream now.

Today i woke up, walked all the way to the overpeck park overlooking the frozen lake. I remember how much you loved this place, and so i sat there for an hour just thinking about you. And everything we talked about and everything we ever laughed about. And it was freezing but the cold didnt nearly compare to how much im missing you. All week ive been just a walking shell, harboring every ounce of detachment to my emotions and to my inability to feel anything but numb. I thought something was wrong with me, because all week ive been finding solitude in unfamiliar places and burying myself in unfamiliar faces in the hopes it would make all this easier. But this week you left us, and you were my best friend since high school and now youre gone. And i have no idea how to deal with it, ive made myself laugh to convince myself its not true, but in reality im a mess when im alone. You were the first person i ran into every single day in high school and the first person who would attempt to make me laugh when i was having a bad day. So no,i cant say im going to be strong today when i see you at the service and i cant say that im going to express any emotions because its just who i am, but if i do its all going to come out like water ripping through a dam. You impacted so many peoples lives and made friends wherever you touched ground, you were light to people who had never known a true friend or had no reason to believe there was any left. And everyday i carry your image, i carry your ideas and the things you taught me on how to appreciate those who have made you happy, how to laugh when things aren't always the best and how to never take someone for granted because one day they'll be gone. And ill keep that same promise we made in high school until the day i die. Everyone's talking about you and not a single person will forget you, you truly are an inspiration and i will miss you. And i promise ill think of you often, im just being honest. Thats all i can offer. Thats all that i know how to give. RIP Chynna.

Watching muscles ache from the stress in your back
Waiting for bones to break from the weight of what you lack.
I would spend all my time helping you find truth,
And it really cuts like a knife knowing I can't save you.
And it really eats me inside,  knowing i cant bring you back.
AND I CANT TELL WHAT HURTS MORE.
PIECING MYSELF TOGETHER OR PRETENDING IM INTACT
THE FACT YOUR CONTACT IN MY PHONE IS JUST A MEMORY
OR THAT ILL NEVER BE ABLE TO ACCEPT YOUR MORTALITY...
Because saying goodbye hurts the worst when you know it's the final word
It comes across like a curse and I can't believe you said it first
So now the final word on the final page
of the final chapter of this narrative we made
Is my weak conscious whispering words through my mouth,
the very words I prayed would never come out.

I keep clinging onto the past and hoping the future will be the same,
But now I cry and laugh knowing the past would not remain
And I would argue with God, every night I would lie awake
And lie to myself, hoping all of this was fake.
But fate has a funny way of rearranging things.
It comes in unannounced and misplaces everything.
The hours are ticking and they feel like forever.
But forever came suddenly and it feels like nothing.

Because I got a new perspective on general anesthetics
When you finally went to see Jesus,
and all your family learned how to believe in a void,
because that's all that they could see.
Cigarette smoke and broken words,
My heart became the platform for everything they hated the most,
And I stayed clear of the lack,
Hoping somebody would come by and cut this rope.

And I wrestled with the idea of taking your place,
But I know that if anyone deserves a break from this world of pain,
It's you, it's not me.
And I'm still asleep.

It's not about being there for me, it's about respecting me enough
to tell me why you're not.
So I'll just slip back into my sleep,
There's a ghost in my casket .
and most nights, I wish it was you.

If you never break youll never know how, to put yourself back together. And if we never fall down, youll never learn how to brush off the dirt on your knees, and tell yourself, this isnt me, im free and this is not all that i can or will be. Or wont be, whats the difference? Is my self taught fascination for a life i can only dream about, my own undoing? or am i simply reacting to the chemicals procreating within my head, all assembled to make one thing clear but unsaid: That im alive and so are you. Even when it feels like the night resembles the reflection of who and what weve become deep inside, well if the tides can change then so can we and well flow just as eagerly and carelessly, but with such beauty. All of this it amazes me, and i can only picture it in somber incandescent shades of dreams but reality and sleep paralysis are all interconnected and if i hadn't said it then i know you've thought it. Flawlessly sewn together, were the moments of our lives, and we walked through every door not knowing that the lights would be off or that the walls would have voices. Speaking and listening, just as much as we were hopelessly suffering without telling anybody.  I knew more about you from just looking at you then i knew about myself, you spoke in secrecy and silence, but the words from your mouth resonated in vibrant violence. Almost definite and deafening. And maybe im not saying a word to you, but im also not admitting a thing to myself, Half whisper, half melody, i sculpt this with your image. This all comes down to rules in poetry. But when the sun breaks through the window pane. The glimmer and gleam peak first, and on my desk theres a picture. A memory suspeneded in time i guess, this makes no sense why i keep here on my desk. But part of me enjoys teh way the light seems to amplify it. Inanimate but it speaks louder then i ever could, and id show you what i meant if i ever could. Im not getting any ideas on how to act about this.. And if the waters calm, if they should ever decrease, then let me know exactly whats the point of this. Redundant suffering, well wheres the progression in that? Is it hard to except that the only talent you lack is the fact you cant admit you think about death often? And maybe not death in a coffin, but the death of your mentality, your ability to feel. Youre losing all motion, youre looking for pleasure, some sort of defeat, it all turns to anger and danger. Well maybe the grass isnt always greener in your neighbros yard,it looks so pristine how it glistens how it comes back to life in the light. But perhaps you can look a little closer, climb over that white picket fence, and tkae a gander at how the grass i just weeds but perspective is a visual disease.

47.
I heard my own voice break, stutter once then stop it. I heard
A sentence started confidently halted by the sudden absence of a word.
Stumbled and I sputtered trying to find it back, something once so simple gone now. When you first met me, did you know you’d show me your scars?
I had a heavy heart, she carried a door, it’s shattered pane all wrapped in plastic and she asked if I could fix it, come by a little later help her put it back on hinges. “See, I’m far too upset to lift it and it’s not for my house,
It’s my mind's.” When you opened up the door, what is it you thought you’d find? But you see i never fixed a single thing in my life, and whats worse i dont know what im doing. Im attempting to make sense of this. Categorizing apathy with sanity, but one of the two I surely lack.
So i guess well just drown it, with poetry, liquor and repress any other facts.
But the pills made her sleep too much. And she couldn’t keep happy as a result so one day she just gave up on taking them.
And that day she had called you, she’d locked herself outside of her mind.
She was spiraling and spiraling and tumbling down into darkness.
Losing all faith in the light, the night whispered in her ear:
"If you dont want to live, theres no reason to continue here"
How quickly did you get there? And what were you thinking while pulling up? What fears flashed in front of you, taunted you, walking to knock on the door?
I remember it. That story you told me came back clear tonight here while writing. And you should know the feeling never left me-the weight of my heart-when you showed me the scars in your words, when I looked in your eyes and I heard what you said how you probably would’ve died were it not for to care for yourself, and how someone had stopped you. How you seemed to look through me to some old projector screen playing back the scene as you described it on a movie reel, as real as the minute when it happened, that memory moving behind me. Because this is still a huge part of my life, and its getting harder to find the difference between a pen, liquor and a knife.
Theyll all cause me harm,  one will be temperate, the other will leave a permanent scar on my arm.
And I sit in my apartment.
I’m getting no answers.
I’m finding no peace, no release from the anger.
I leave it at arms length.
I’m keeping my distance.
From hotels and anything and blood on the carpet.
I’m stomaching nothing.
I’m reaching for no one.
I’m leaving this city and I’m headed out to nowhere.
I carry your image.
Thats me being honest
And if you hear me, I think of you often.
That’s all I can offer.
That’s all that I know how to give.

45.
I think I’m losing you, but I will never regret choosing you
I didnt make these choices, but i didnt help undo them
Maybe were not lost, were just misguided,
But if you were the liquor, id have you over and over and over again
Because its not the silence that will rip through my head
Its the idea that what ive written is left unsaid once again and again and again
So when we read words, we write what we truly experience
Even if theyre not spoken aloud, its like were hearing it
Because I am in pain, and for now that will be enough
And the ones around me convince me that I was the only person who was dumb enough to believe that you and I had hope.
But now I know even after you began to let your emotions slow the only reason I stood alone was because I was the only one who knew the real meaning on not letting go.

Everyone wanted me to see that we could not thrive, so gouge out my eyes.
Because if this is reality then I guess I’m not alive,
Because I don’t know a life in where I can’t make things right.
And when life teaches you to drive and you finally say goodbye
And you won’t let me stand by your side
Ill know that though some feelings are hurt, none will have died.
Cause I used to stay up at night and picture myself looking into your eyes
Shouting as you would sigh “how dare you think you can fall asleep with water dripping from the kitchen sink, how dare you think you can fall asleep with all these little leaks in this home we built in our dreams”
A picture is worth a thousand words or whatever people say to me.
It’s hard to believe when your mind is lost and in need,
And all you can picture is a memory inside of someone else’s sheets.
A prayer that nothing will keep,
A hope that light will seek before the dark sinks too deep.
Or at least the sinking feeling inside of me will decrease when the release of perceived dreams burn in the flame of feeling free.
So feel free to be free if that’s what you need.
And if someday you feel alone and everything caves in when you try to breathe, but cannot.
Because breathing takes too long, and death seems much closer.
Because the air is too thick, and your lungs just cant commit
To the re-appropriation of decisions made in false associations
Know that you are not alone as far as I can see,
Because you could speak to me, and though my tongue wont move
It doesnt mean, that im not listening, it just means, ive got things to say
But some things are not worth saying, theyre worth writing
Through this I have realized that if I were God we would have all just died,
Because i no longer feel blood coursing through me, i no longer feel alive inside
Being numb isnt a way of life, its a death sentence, and im at the end of my sentence, so end this.
And what good am I if all I can create is a projection of my own mind.
A dream of finding time to remind you that I’m still here and I’m not fine.
Maybe someday we can talk about ourselves and we can talk about the weather.
How December is cruel but January hasn't been any better.
I wrote you a letter, but i never sent it
So it sits on my desk, just waiting to be opened, and noticed;
Whenever you leave I don’t care what I’m remembered for,
I just want to be remembered.
Because even if I failed you at least I tried,
And if I had a chance I’d give you one last kiss and I’d bite down on your lip;
And I’d try to puncture it so you’ll never forget that time,
And honestly I know sometimes life will take a turn for the worst,
And sometimes life will even hurt.
And I know some days, some days you’ll be afraid of the lessons you’ll have to learn
And some days you’ll even feel burned,
And all that i have left are these words.

But I always get what I deserve.

41.

I tried looking into her eyes to make sense of my own life,
But found senseless realizations, I was reckless and she was justification;
A vacation from the monotony I lived in.
And avoiding risk felt nice until I realized, I was avoiding purpose.
And it’s all new but I enjoyed her,
I still do,
At least I think because I don’t want to live so empty.
And I have this tendency to complicate things better than I break things and she was somehow caught in the in between.
And forever means forever and that’s what it will always mean.
And life is a reality except for when it’s a dream.
And those are the moments that I can’t seem to think,
But I make sense of my mess by making sense of her and me.
And this fear keeps me alive,
And I could try.
But this fear fuels the flames,
That’s why I feel like I’m going to die.
Cause she kept a part of me close by and I liked it the best I can.
And now that I know who I used to be it’s easy to be happy with who I am.
And that’s where she came in.
A half-baked smile and a heart to pretend,
But prior to then, feeling was nothing more to me than a vacation,
A vacant motivation,
To avoid the means it takes to reach any real end.
A sense of salvation,
But also an element of bitter hope,
To cope with the rope that was tied around my neck.
And the saviour I hoped for was chased away,
Way back then,
When I found vices to take the place of all the things I wanted to be.
And I lost sight of me,
But I was told I could be anybody.
And I thought I could find purpose
In wanting someone who looks like me
And I began dreaming or sinking,
Most nights they meant the same thing.
And when that salvation finally found me,
It was traded away for thirty pieces of silver.
Seems like that’s not too much I guess but I sold my saviour for a whole lot less.
My two best friends,
Acceptance and a mirage of fake happiness.
And now the words I use to cling to as my refuge,
Now torture me in my head.
Forgive them father they know not what they do,
And that’s my only truth,
That I can’t sleep at night
Because of me, and because of you
Dreaming and reality, you tend to exist in my both
Except in one i get to speak to you again, and then it ends
And i wake up, all over again, so i sleep
And I can’t get these things right,
And salvation escaped when she came into view.
And now I’m hoping my whole life isn’t mistaken as you,
But there’s no way of knowing,
When all I’m doing is coping.
With my own pride.
And my past would fight with me hoping I would find truth,
But it’s never a good idea to start a fight with a man who has nothing to lose,
And I’m empty.
My heart is caving in.
And for whatever reason,
I finally let somebody in.
And I don’t know what love is.
But I’m growing.

Some of these have purpose, others are searching for it.
Some of these words have homes, others are now abandoned and wander alone.
You can decipher what you believe, these words will come to mean
But in the end, its all in your head, only an author knows what its meant
I cannot say my life, is perfect right now, but now creativity flows
I cant lie and say im happy right now, but these poems will guide the way home.

39.
Sometimes i believe in a purpose
Perhaps, i just want to be important
Not for eternity,
just for a single moment
As the broken sleep,
Death forgot to thank me when I set her free.
Come empty and you won't need anything,
Believe in your own blood until your heart stops beating,
And then you too will be set free.
Tear down your towers and build bridges,
Your god is a fraud if you wrote the mission.
And the devil will die when he has no witness,
I 'm not broken, I am nothing.
I'm the vessel, not the poison.

And I didn't want to lose you, But sometimes I forget
When my prayers feel like they're just cigarettes.
They'll take the headache away, then turn to ash,
These decisions became bad additions to the equation
To subtract the idea between two people
Only to find the solution was inexplicable depression,
Not progression
But they bring me back to life every time I find a new light,
But then they bring up my past,
And I fall further and further, and further,
Until I'm afraid to get back up because
I don't want to fall again.
But if there's one thing I know about myself,
It's that I don't know anything about myself.

And my hands are not clean, maybe they never will be,
But they can still carry you home when you're ready to sleep.
And the only reason the devil's alive in you and me
Is because we disrupted him when he tried to fall asleep.

21.
You in the living room. You on a sunny afternoon. A breeze…seen when the curtains move. You by the window with both eyes fixated out. Blowing smoke out from your mouth. A cigarette placed between your lips. Moving elegantly through space. Striding softly, to the edge of the bed. Where I sit, you placed your body next to me. Mesmerized, careful not to let my words slip. Then you sit and you read and you breath. Slowly you cant help but fall asleep, and I cant help but watch you carefully. From the window where the sunlight frames your silhouette. I think of lighting fireworks, I think of pirouettes..I idly write down observations on the scene. Like do the blueprints name the rooms alone? Do we name them on our own?..You with a book propped on your knees. A breeze…seen in your coffee steam. In a seat right in front of you. “Is this science or is this chemistry?” I ask myself, “how do you do these things to me”. Thinking back to rules of poetry. It’s fourteen lines, the last two rhyme, what does pentameter mean? You in the bed-room legs bent at forty-five degrees. I write AB… AB…AB…AB.. trying to find your rhyme scheme. Hard not to think that about how. All of this imagery, now, could all just be a dream. Or reality, or perhaps something slightly in between. I look for objects on the desk with which to sculpt your image best. What would I name this could I paint it “Woman (reading)?” “Girl (at rest)?”. You live like lightning, yet you move like thunder. I remember it so well. Thinking about last summer. Like photos in an album. So we could look back and we could talk about them. How we started out as a mystery. Yet we were perfect symmetry. Confined to a party scene. July 4th in the backyard. Our emotions we kept a secrecy. Exchanging numbers between the subtle glances. They’ve written books about things like us. Things like summer romances. Things like the dangers. That accompany the thought of two neighbors. And you living all alone. With your apartment you called home. And a road of stairs leading up there. Day after day I’d ascend them. Then followed a set of carefully choreographed knocks. And how they made the chains on that door of yours unlock. I remember how I would laugh. At how long it took sometimes. I guess I have a problem. When it comes to things about the mind. Constantly thinking about things I shouldn’t. Like empathy, happy moments of our past, even death from time to time. You with your body laid carefully in my bed. Placed hip to hip. Morning was slowly coming in, our lips quivered after every spark after every little kiss. And although we were sober, there was a sort of harmony. What has come over me? That fire in your eyes. It Said “I felt electricity surging through my body”. I look for a reason. Something to explain the sparks. Something to give this feeling meaning. But found nothing. It wasn’t lightning when we pressed our lips, it was thunderstorms. But what explains the hums made when our heart skips? Then back to the present, time after time. Day after day. History is said to repeat itself, how the sparks never went away. Summer came as quickly as it departed.  I still remember watching you shifting your weight, turning the page, I can see it all there. A role in name alone. And I pause where I am for a second when I hear your name. Sometimes I think I see your face in improbable places. Do those moments replay for you? I mean do you sometimes feel the same? When I’m suddenly there and then won’t go away. When you’re sitting in the bedroom reading for the afternoon. When your laying softly on the pillow, dreaming about whatever it is you do.  Do you put your book down look and try to find me there? Sometimes I think of all rooms we have visited. How the spaces. In the memories you make change the room from just blueprints. To the place where you live. When we leave there. When we go from a home. You take all that you own but the memories echo. Yes, they echo. On hardwood floor in the living room. Tore the carpet the scratches below that we found. And the wine stain I accidently spilled once on the couch. How we got drunk and decided we’d still try to move it around. And that time we drank tequila for a night, how we laughed with every moment we stood up but kept on falling down. And I can’t tell what the difference is between the memories and the risk, the ones that we made and the ones that we didn’t take. They’ll still be missed, Still a joy, still a cool wind passes over me. Somewhat somberly, the imagery of seasons changing rewind and replay. Through every season you were still a part of me. I was happy that it was your image that haunted my sleep. They all conjure images. Vivid and descriptive.  Where you sit and you smoke in the sunlight aware that I watch but never for too long. And I don’t feel alone. Safe forever in an echo. This feeling will never go. Safe for the hums in the walls. We don’t feel alone now. Our hearts will live safe in the echo. This feeling will never go.

31.  
Funny what you think of after a collapse. While lying in the dirt the first thing that comes back is never quite what you’d have guessed.  Or envisioned. Nor assessed the second time around I digress. And they play back like a movie reel. Funny how things come harder the second time around. Were reliving memories, like watching movies with no sound. And if you could have, you probably would’ve. Said you’d check if all your limbs were intact still and then try to get out. But whats the point in running away? Was there a point to be made? Did I even make it? Now that I mention it. I believe ive forgotten to regret and repress it. And if the spaces are narrow. And all the walls begin to look the same again. Is there really a place far enough? Are there visions in the pavement, a beautiful arrangement, and sophisticated places. Where you could dwell on the past. But still remember why you hate it. This is wild imagination. Its purely entertainment im painting in color, but im running out of room. In fact, running out of time even while im just standing in place. Its like im drowning in the water but im standing on concrete. It’s the land beneath my feet.  Am I losing my mind? The equivalent to falling bricks. When you’ve got wings but theve been clipped. And they think you’ve got it all figured out. You know what youre doing now don’t you? You seem happier now don’t you? Why don’t you tell us your secret. Why don’t you voice your opinion. As if there was any secret at all to be kept, I digress this is the mess within my head ive tried to keep buried and or left for dead again. And this quiet silence is piercing. The silence is violent, how it drags you down with frigid grips at the ankles. Whispering “come home again”, “weve missed you for some time”. But you ran away for a reason, so why the hell would I ever come back? And then the flashbacks come, breaking in unannounced. The things ive kept forgotten for so long. The faces. The people whos names became blank spaces in my head.  I remember once they came in said, “You think this is bad? You don’t know the half.” And they laughed. It’s funny what things come back. The first things you see. How they sort of smiled like it’s only a joke but they were lying. There was something else inside of his eyes. All those secrets people tell to little children. Are warnings that they give them. Like, “Look, I’m unhappy. Please don’t make the same mistake as me.”. Because I guess im only a joke. And my life is just one big comedy. But nobodys watching. And ive stopped laughing along to the track. Because I gave up on everything. So why do they constantly visit me? Do you know what its like? To give up on love, well it hurts,to give up on everyone you used to trust the most. There are ghosts, and there demons, and they all live within the walls. In every room you ever visited. In every crack and fracture in lonely halls. So they speak out in volumes. And you try not to listen. So they speak up a little louder, from a hum to a whisper. And its sinister almost inaudible, yet it resonates so loud. It becomes so much it almost perforates your eardrums. Why are those old worn out jokes on married life told at toasts at receptions still? How does it never occur how easily people are burned? And how easily people are afraid to trust or want or feel or want to trust to feel? Speak slow, the echoes in the shadows know. They hear you in your sleep. And the way you shift positions in your dreams, the darkness peaks in through the windows as the light dismisses itself. Almost polite, almost embarrassed. Everyone knows were afraid. Afraid to feel the same pain we discovered a few years back and some days. So we want nothing to do with you. I was happy for once, I was doing just fine. My timeline was becoming redefined, and I could stand on my own without anyone’s help. Especially not the people who pushed you off the edge in the first place. Those who left you to drown in yourself. The very same people who tied your ankles to cinderblocks. The very same who promised you safer ground. And then the earth quickly broke away. Why they then offered you their hand in safety. You’re a contradiction, a manipulation. A fabricated idea of what it meant to have someone. I gave you trust. I gave you visitation rights. So if you believe this is about you, then perhaps the shoe fits. Funny what you think of in the wreckage, lying there in the dirt and the dust and the glass how you’re suddenly somewhere, in the desert, in the nighttime, and it’s getting close to something like Christmas. Something warm and familiar. An open ended idea of literature written about a time where things felt, and smelt much similar rather than simpler. Glance back, I remember how irresponsible id been. How pathetic I was to blame everything on people instead of myself. I was sadistic, and intolerable. Improbable and pathological with the things I spoke. How did I ever manage to expect to keep anyone around? When all I did was keep my mind occupied. Not occupied with anything but shallow thoughts of insecurity. When that summer ended we came back I was jobless still. I guess in retrospect I should’ve sensed decay. Then that day, how you said, “I just don’t know” and I promised. We’d rearrange things to fix the mess I’d made here in some way. And that goes in the same cycle. And that goes in the same way I lost everyone I had. But I guess in the end we just moved furniture around. Don’t you get it, your demons never left. The demons in your head never moved out. They simply moved the furniture around. But I guess in the end it sort of feels like every day it’s harder to stay happy where you are. There are all these ways to look through the fence into your neighbor’s yard.  Why even risk it? It’s safer to stay distant. When it’s so hard now to just be content. Because there’s always something else. Now I’m proposing my own toast, composing my own jokes for those times I stayed afraid in bed. But never again. Noone will ever have control over me. No one should ever be that deserving or ever so worthy. And maybe I’m miserable, but I’d rather run forever in the opposite direction, than suffer your jokes again. This was just a well composed reminder, to never leave the doors open for old friends