I️ draw red lines
To silence my mind
Breathe in deeply
One step at a time
I’ve gotten this far
I️ can keep going, still
Even when I️ don’t want to
I️ will.

You can’t see the way the sunlight
Casts shadows across the page
As my hand draws the lines
To make these sentences.
But that doesn’t make it any less real.
You can’t hear the way the song
Plays over the coffee shop
Speakers, hardly recognized by
Fellow patrons over concentrated
Furrowed brows and steaming milk.
But that doesn’t make me avoid feeling it.
You can’t smell the mix of
Espresso and the cologne of
The man sitting across from me and
Be taken back to that day in March
Playing in my mind so vividly.
But that doesn’t make me crazy.
I couldn’t ask you to even try
To begin understanding the slightest
Bit of what makes me who I am.
Yet here I am.
Living anyway.

Hey,
Stay.

The weight of reality sits in my chest.
This is all beyond what my mind can comprehend.
How can it be gone if it's still here?

It wasn't perfect.
It left scars as I shed tears
No one ever saw either anyway.

Who am I? What have I become?
Is this all worth this path I walk on?

My pen is a knife,
Bloodletting across pages since I could hold it in my hands,
Since I know what it meant when shapes became words
And sentences became bought.
Now they won't stop
And I don't know how to let go
Again.

Every day is a new dance with grief,
Torn between remembering
And trying to piece together reality.

The pen pierces my heart.
It gushes new words onto paper with every beat
Words my mind and mouth are at a loss for
Words ears will never hear.

Even if they did, they're impossible to comprehend.
I write them anyway.
Just in case there's someone else out there
Crying alone in the shell of everything they've ever known
Trying to convince themselves it's worth it to inhale.

The air is cool for a summer day.
Kittens play with fallen leaves
As the breeze does the same with my hair.
Everything around me familiar
Burned into my memory.

Small changes have happened over the years
But some things remain forever the same.
The big ant hill at the end of the road
It predates us.
Will probably out live us all.

The atmosphere feels different
As though autumn decided to debute
Before pumpkin spice is released in stores
For once.
I'm not complaining.

I take no pictures.
Instead I open my eyes wide
In effort to take in ever detail in front of me
As the moment that came is leaving
Even as I live and breathe.

Making shapes of clouds that tease the rain.
And to think, I really liked that day.

I know I'm safe, but I wish I felt it.
I feel like I'm lost.
Drowning.
Sinking to the bottom of the lake
But everyone assumes I'm fine because there's a smile on my face.
I convince myself to stay quiet.
I don't want to be a bother.
Is it too much to wish someone would see it without me saying anything?
But they won't.
The one thing I'm good at is faking it.

I listen to my heartbeat
It gets me thinking;

How it's never stopped beating
Even when I wanted to quit everything.

How much we take for granted,
Like the feelings we can't see of the ones we love.

How everyone has one
And everyone's will stop.

One day.

This muscle with refuse to work.
Blood will stop circulating
My lungs will stop filling and emptying again.

Some days I hold my breath
To remind myself I still have the luxury of breathing.

Once my days are done, that's it.
No more sunrises, only that final sunset.
The world as I know it will end that day
Yet, it keeps spinning.

Poems will be written
Songs will be penned
People will move on and remember again
When that thought in the back of their mind
Breaks through to the surface
No matter how hard it was suppressed.

That memory will fight
To be remembered.

I'll fight for that next sunrise.