Every time I wake up in a room like this one,
I can hear her whispering in my ear the same sweet refrain
I fell in love with however many years ago.

The pages of marked up calendars lay scattered around
the bed as I stare up into the ceiling fan,
counting the rotations of the blades.

1001...
1002...
1003...
I've never lost count.

She hates my focus and slides her cold pale hand
around my neck loose enough to entice me but
tight enough to keep me quiet.

I refuse to look her in the eyes because then
I'll be admitting defeat.

She's never cared about winning though because
she's never had any competition.

My heart and soul have been hers since she first
slid past my lips and replaced all the air in my lungs
with her vapid sentiments.

She herself has always been the sweetest tasting thing
I have ever encountered.

A single tear escapes my eye and rolls off my face.

I cringe in disgust at myself as she leans into my ear
and whispers the three words I have grown to hate
more than anything in this existence.

I love you.

A second tear races to join the first
as my heartbeat slows to a near standstill.

I can feel her smiling next to me.

Every breath I share with another feels ripped
from my chest but she never left me and never will,
no matter how much I may beg and plead
it's truly apparent to me that she owns me
and I'll never escape her grasp.

So I turn my head and stare into her eyes
for what I surely hope is the last time.

Even if it means my eyes never open again.

"There is always one woman
to save you from another
and as that woman saves you
she makes ready to destroy"

Chinaski taught me that

when I was still in
high school and looking for
answers in poetry books.

I managed to find few and
far between in those four years.

Then I became a college
student and my hunt turned
to the wilderness of
crowded bars, living room floors
and enough pills to
swim through
only to drown in the deep end.

I caught my breath in three years
and surfaced to a job I hated
in a town I loathed
but always called
home.

I kept my company but they
never sought to keep me
or so I tell myself.

Really I used every last drop
of them I could get
before the next one rode along
because of what Chinaski told me.

But this one won't ride along again
and I fear the day she does
because
Chinaski might be wrong.

To put it all in perspective,
my heart is neglected
so I apologize if my love notes
get hectic.
My ex's are restless,
aiming above the necklace
They're coming for my head,
I'm just ticking off the seconds.
What I never expected
was seeing your face
every time I run away
into the void that is space.
I hesitate
to give a name
to whatever we are
'cause words are just sound waves
that never reach the stars.
But how did we ever start?
I feel safest in the dark
with no one else around.
See apathy isn't hard
but empathy is an art
and lying is a profession
When you tell me how you feel
my reaction is second guessing.
Maybe you'll get the message
and just leave me alone
My heart is a lot of things
but it's hardly a home
Too many have hurt so
too few do I trust.
She looked at me and said
"What's that got to do with us?"

I'm throwing up blood in the sink again.
I'll spend the rest of today exhausted and
alone with my thoughts.
My persistently pervasive thoughts.
My half-assed attempt at love
has left me unable to enjoy
what should be the greatest
success I've had to date.
I don't think about her like a
person I love or lust after.
I think of her as something I need.
She is my necessity.
My constant.
My control.
I've given her all the power over me
and she doesn't even know because
despite my declarations of love
all I feel in my gut is pain and hate
and bile burning into my chest
and bleeding out onto the page.
And it's not poetic. It's painful.

She told me she loved me today
which can only mean our clock
is ticking.

To most that word marks a beginning
to a new and wonderful existence
full of meaning but to me it's
a single syllable that ushers in
a cascade of doubt, lies and
animosity that slams you into the
ground so hard the Devil thinks
you're knocking on his door.

To me it's the signal that I've
overstayed my welcome and if I want
any chance to spare myself from misery
I should just jump ship and take
my chances with the sharks below.

I'd rather be ripped to shreds by
ravenous beasts than get fooled into
thinking I truly matter to her.

The sound of her sweet sincerity
is drowned out by the echoing sentiments
of her predecessors, forever ringing
in my ears like a constant reminder
that all you have in this world
is your ***** and your word and
she has neither.

But the joke's on her this time.

I've found my way out.

Because I love her too.

Tonight I saw her for the first time in a long time.

I haven't wanted someone so badly in years
and it was beyond any physical yearning.

It was this visceral knowledge that she
was everything I needed to chase away
the bleakness that I've come to call life.

I hate that about her.

I hate that I've dive-bombed into this
******* pit of depression and anxiety
that has ****** away any self-respect
I may have ever held on to and replaced
it with this archaic notion that I can't be
happy on my own.

I hate it because it's true.

I am validated in the eyes of others
and when there's no one around to see
me I don't know who to be.

I don't know how to be.

I sip and I smoke and I pop
and try to fill the vacancy with
any and everything my body will allow.

I've only come to suicide once and it was so
many years back it feels more like the plot
of a ****** soap opera than a chapter of
my life story.

Clearly I failed and by some miracle
not a soul knows that I ever even tried.

They just thought I was sick.

Well the doctors are long gone but the
sickness still pulses through my veins like
a vapid bassline in a song no one
bothers to learn the words to.

And why should they when it's my song to
sing and I can't even come up with the melody
on my own?

I saw her tonight for the first time in a long time
and the only thing I could bring myself to think
was how much happier she would be talking to
anyone else in this world besides me.

She owns parts of my soul that have no value
because they were pried from a shell that housed no worth.

Everything she means to me serves as a poignant
reminder that I'll only ever be as good as the person
that loves me.

And to her I never meant a thing.

An ex of mine once told me that no one ever changed.
She was convinced that whoever you were when you
crawled out of your mother was who you would die being.
She didn't believe in change.
A poster child for the G.O.P. if there ever was one but
blessed with the assets of someone far more liberal.
I tried to argue with her but found myself speaking
into a brick wall with curves that made every point
and counter-point utterly irrelevant to me.
Our relationship didn't last but her sentiment clearly
did because she's still an unyielding jezebel of a
woman and I'm still scribbling my resentment into
paper whiter than the pills still polluting my bloodstream.