I am Scott Pilgrim withoot,
getting the awkward happy ending.

I hurriedly pull my street dusted , golden brown Toyota into the middle of a gas station war zone. The kind that turns neighbors into enemies, fighting to gain the only valuable piece of real estate around – the gas tanks. The drivers collectively sport the exact same exhausted and frustrated grimaces. A rusty and dated “ Exon Mobile” sign stands tall and strong against the sundrenched sky. The day is coming to a close, and the sun seems hurried to set as if it is exhausted from the day’s labors and expectations that it must rise again tomorrow, just like the gas station’s patrons. This station, to most, is just another stop. Another errand that puts itself between you and the warmth of home. This station, is just another stop. Another errand at the end of an endless day. But to me, this place is full of promise. This is the one place on earth that gives us life. It gives us the chance to see the world and to explore uncharted grounds. This place brings us closer to adventure and myseries, to happiness, to heartbreak, to feeling. This is the fuel and the energy that is waiting to help you make it to the hospital at 4 am to see the birth of a child. This old and worn pitstop let’s us fall in love with the world, with what we can see, with eachother.
But there is this silver truck with tires too big and a man two sizes to small in the passenger seat. There is a prominent dent in the left side door that has remained unchanged, unhelped, in weeks. As this silver, dented piece of metal sits in the way between me and my pajamas, I have the chance to stop. Not to stop because I’ve finally got to where I’ve been trying to go. Not to stop to pay the McDonald’s cashier in shameful regret of another broken new year’s promise. But to really stop. For an unexpectedly and disappointingly long time. To stop with no expectations. To be forced to just stop. And to wait. And to look around.

One
Have you taken your meds today?
You're drinking your anxiety like an alcoholic swallows gin
And I can see the panic in your shaking hands
but the only healing is filled with anti-depressants and sleeping pills
and numbness makes you feel like a corpse

Two
You've gotten a new scar
you show me with wet eyes
And I pretend I don't notice
Because I might just end up shouting
Because I hate that you can't stop
Because I hate that I can't understand
And you think that I didn't care

Three
You look so alone
and I try to come closer
but you've torn a gap so wide between us
that my screams sound like echoes of yours
and I couldn't find a way to reach you
so I stopped trying

Four
You called me heartless
not with your voice but you screamed it in your movement
I felt it in every corner of my mind when I stopped spinning
and all I could think about was you
and I couldn't hate you for your cruelty
because you don't understand what you've done to me

Five
I felt you crashing
not right beside me but a million miles away
and you fought so hard
but couldn't keep up
you said you'd handle it
I should've known you were lying
and now I can't hug you like I used to
and you no longer show me your scars

Who said that love was fire?
I know that love is ash.
It is the thing which remains
When the fire is spent,
The holy essence of experience.

My poem may be yours indeed
In melody and tone,
If in its rhythm you can read
A music of your own;
If in its pale woof you can weave
Your lovelier design,
'Twill make my lyric, I believe,
More yours than mine.

I'm but a prompter at the best;
Crude cues are all I give.
In simple stanzas I suggest -
'Tis you who make them live.
My bit of rhyme is but a frame,
And if my lines you quote,
I think, although they bear my name,
'Tis you who wrote.

Yours is the beauty that you see
In any words I sing;
The magic and the melody
'Tis you, dear friend, who bring.
Yea, by the glory and the gleam,
The loveliness that lures
Your thought to starry heights of dream,
The poem's yours.