I keep having this dream where my worst fear keeps coming to life but when I try to wake up I find my eyes are already open.

One day I looked around and realized I am sleeping with shadows and ghosts of people I loved. I loved them but they didn’t quite see the appeal in wrapping arms around intangible demons that I’ve been shouldering ever since the lights went out that time when I was 16. It’s been dark for most of the time since.

I’ve been finding flashlights and candles as I go, some burning brighter than others, but batteries and flames always die on me, much like the way these people have to me. I’ve been walking blind and I keep stubbing my toes but I can’t stop moving, I can’t stop because I’ve been afraid of what’s hiding in the dark for so long and a part of me refuses to accept that maybe I’m just trying to run from myself.

Instead of bread crumbs I’ve been leaving droplets and slivers of red iron that sink into the floorboards but I can’t see them anyway. I can’t find my way back, I don’t know how to find that bright trail I was on when I was 14. I was 14 and held the sunlight in my hands and then I was 15 and I was tripping over coal that embedded itself into my knees, and then I was 16 and I was in the dark.

When I was 17 I learned what it was like to have the darkness inside you, what it was like to desperately hope for some light to vanquish you, some kind of beacon that cut through the fog and left everything clean. When I was 18 I became a shadow myself and I’ve been flitting amongst a garden full of dead roses that whisper the names of the ghosts that crawl into bed with me, hoping that a hero would rise to exorcise me, lay me to rest.

At the age of 19 I started having the dream every day, every night. It used to come few and far between, but I became grey instead of pitch and now I’m tangible enough to hurt again. In this dream, my worst fear keeps coming to life, but when I try to wake up my eyes are already open and I am staring at the next ghost waiting to slip between my sheets. They smile softly at me, all rosy and alive and there, but when I blink they are wispy and walking through my bedroom door.

I keep having this dream where my worst fear keeps coming to life but when I try to wake up I find my eyes are already open. It's the kind of bitterness you hate yourself for, the kind that grinds itself into your bones and sours everything you taste. It's the kind of experiences that makes you wonder if history is not so much a timeline but a cycle that's got you in a chokehold. It’s the kind of disappointment that becomes second nature, the kind that always lingers like last night’s lover, always wanting one last taste. It's the kind of abandonment that leaves you feeling at home in condemned houses; something about them resonates within you, feels like family. It’s the kind of fear that leaves you with your heart racing. It’s the kind of dream where you’re afraid you are never ever going to be enough; it’s the kind of dream that you’ve been awake for and living all along.

You hold your silence until one day you find that you’ve lost the ability to ever explain what’s eating you whole. You’ve spent your entire life just trying to make the minimum impact on people around you but you then found out the less you push them the more they push back and then suddenly you’re falling and no one will catch you, you’re flipping over the fence and now it’s just freefall, baby, you grasp on to anything tangible but it’s not enough, it’s never enough, you’ve been drowning for life but you only just recently lost the ability to breathe, you’re seeking something you can never touch and everything is sliding away from your grasp. All you are is losing, you’re losing everything you’ve ever wanted to love, you’re losing but you’re helping yourself lose because all you ever wanted is everyone you ever loved to gain what they’ve been searching for. It’s the kind of losing you can’t be mad about, the kind of losing that makes sense because at least they’re happy, at least they can have what you so desperately crave. The sunshine is recoiling from your skin but it’s okay because you know those rays of light will caress the skin of those who better deserve it.

You go to sleep surrounded by broken mirrors and shattered dreams and the ghosts of wishes you held tightly in your fists only to realize you crushed them against your palms. You’ve been making love to your fantasies all this time you forgot to remember love was just another fantasy you had once upon a time. At the end of the night you’re always left licking your wounds alone, the coppery taste a false flashback of the time you tasted them on your lips. The blankets you drag around your pale corpse are the only warmth you have left, the type of dead warmth that leaves your fingers frozen and your heart even more so.

You’re the placeholder, the leech, the drowning non-swimmer who drags everyone down with you; you cling to everything you get thrown because you’re so desperate to have a grasp on something. Invisibility would be a blessing if only you could shed your translucent skin at last. It’s been hard being shimmery see-through, enough to catch the eye but not enough to keep it. So you’re going to set fire to yourself, go out in a way that’s much more blaze than glory, leave behind ashes that will scatter before anyone has even noticed them blossom into existence. This is the kind of invisibility you’ve been dreaming of, the kind of freedom you’ve been aching for.

Life lesson: if you play with fire you’ll get burned, but if you play with nothingness it will swallow you whole.

You're talking to the air now.

It's the kind of silence after a funeral, after something has been taken that you can never get back. It's the kind of sorrow that feels like wet ashes, the kind that sticks under your nails and leaves behind heavy footprints when you run. It's the kind of pain you can get art out of, the only kind that creates but also destroys so well. It's the kind of bitterness you hate yourself for, the kind that grinds itself into your bones and sours everything you taste.

It's the kind of thing you drain yourself worrying about, that makes everything black out on the inside. It's the kind of repetition that makes you wonder if history is not so much a timeline but a cycle that's got you in a chokehold. It's the kind of abandonment that leaves you feeling at home in condemned houses; something about them resonates within you, feels like family. It's the kind of wound you refuse to let heal over; as long as it hurts at least you're grounded in some kind of existential qualifier.

It’s the kind of ache that creeps up on you slowly and then one day, before you realize it, there’s only ache left. It’s the kind of disappointment that becomes second nature, the kind that always lingers like last night’s lover, always wanting one last taste, always waiting just around the corner for the next time they scent blood. It’s the kind of loss you write poems about, the kind that’s metaphysical more than anything else, the kind that makes space wider between the letters “y”, “o”, “u”, and “m”, “e”.

You're getting older but you're not growing up; it's the kind of metastatic growth that was never any good for anyone. It’s the kind of thing you cry about in the quiet hours, the kind of thing that you fill oceans with iron over. It’s just picking swimming over sinking. It’s the kind of lesson that stings to the touch every time you go over it, the kind that burns every time you flick it open for revision.

It’s just the kind of life you’ve been living, that’s all.

How long have you been loading those
armour-piercing
0.30 caliber
bullets of regret into your mouth?
Do you fire them at will?
Does the safety
(of holding your tongue)
sometimes get neglected
(like you)?
When will you learn that holding your fire protects
not only uninvolved civilians
but also the ones close to you?
When will the war against yourself end?
Do you think a ceasefire will highlight the blood
that stains your hands,
the lives you took with your bullets?
The dead don't listen
but the living make you wish you couldn't
either.

I am still your kind of beautiful
But not your kind of love.
You are still my kind of love,
But not my kind of "mine".
"I still want to be friends,"
Is like running a race and placing first,
But being told that something went wrong
And you are disqualified.
(I have been disqualified from your heart, I guess,
If anything at all.)

You were part of my world
And I was part of yours.
You're still part of mine,
But I fell through the cracks
When the ground shook and your world was redesigned.
I wish I could see the stars from here.
(I caught myself thinking that the stars were in your eyes,
And that I would rather see your eyes than see the sky.)
At least I am still part of your world, down here.
I content myself with the thought that it is better to
Have been forgotten here than to have been consciously eliminated.
I run my fingers over the molten rock, knowing that at least here
I can be (at) the centre of your world.
(It is a selfish and rather stupid thought that I don't necessarily agree with
But at least I am here
And not nowhere.)

I hate that I remember what day I (we) fell (apart),
But I can't remember what day we first kissed.
I can't remember what day you first said, "I love you".
I can't remember what day I first said, "I love you".
(I can't remember the sound of your voice,
And I hate that I can't remember what it felt like
To be yours.)

How do you go from first place
To "did not finish"?
How do you go from "in love"
To "just friends"?
(I thought things were going great.
How long had things been less than great on your end?)

I suppose one day weeds will choke the flowers
That were planted by your memory
And fertilized by your love.
And one day when those weeds die,
New flowers will be planted by someone else.
Perhaps the wind will stop whispering your name
In favour of howling someone else's.
The sky will take the stars back from your eyes
And I guess fill someone else's someday.
But for now it is all still yours and for you.
(I still want it to be yours but you don't want it anymore.)

Now I face storms alone.
The clouds yell and fight the way we never did.
(I never got to know what it was like to be with you
When thunder rumbled and lightning struck.)
Things are no longer the same.
I am no longer the same.
And neither are you.

We gave each other the world
Until you took yours back.
You are my kind of love,
But now you're not my kind of "mine".