Loving you is the smell of the rain
Fresh. Life sustaining.
Sweet droplets dripping on petals
Blooming in spring.

Loving you is breath catching in my chest
Overwhelmed and afraid
Because it’s so good I fret
The concept of ever having to spend
A day of this life without you in it.

Loving you is the depth of
The sea
So vast that even its
Contemplation is greater than is
Humanly conceivable,
The feeling of warm salt water on
Tanned skin,
Sounds of
Crashing waves,
loving you is a perfect summer day.

Loving you is a rocket to outer space
Lost in the cosmos
I’m living amongst the constellations
Draped against
The Milky Way;
Loving you,
Being loved by you,
Looms larger than this world.

Loving you is the most
Beautiful terrifying expansive
Life-altering mind-blowing unimaginable
Gift
That I never would’ve dreamed of finding
Let alone deserving.

Loving you is absolute magic;
Because you are absolutely magical.

I wish I would’ve let you hold me just a little while longer.

I wish I would’ve let you kiss me a little more.

I wish I would’ve let you continue to touch my skin, run your hands through my hair, caress the features on my face; I wish I would’ve let you stay.

I knew I couldn’t. I knew it was time to say goodbye. I knew we were doing the right thing. I knew it, and yet

I wish it had gone any other way.

I wish that the feelings alone were enough to make us work.
I wish that loving you, being loved by you, I wish that was all it took.
I wish our timing was right.
I wish rights were just right and without any wrongs.
I wish we weren’t just a chapter.
I wish we were the epilogue.

I knew it was time to say goodbye.
But I still smell the space on my pillow where your curly hair rested against it as you looked at me that way you do.
I still feel the way it felt when you pulled me close as I cried, how you kissed the top of my head tenderly.
I still hear the reverberations of our laughter, the things we said in unison, the way we finished each other’s sentences and shared our deepest fears.

We said goodbye to this version of us.
We knew it was time.
We knew it was what we needed to do.
And one day soon, I hope my heart knows it too.

I distinctly remember the moment
When I realized I was in love with you.

I was lying beneath
The most incredible night sky,
Black blanket speckled with
An endless stretch of stars.
I had never seen a sky like that.
I had never seen anything so
Infinitely beautiful,
So breathtaking.
I felt the smallness of my existence
In the context of an infinite universe.

And it was then that I knew,
In the smallness of my existence,
In the vastness of this world,
Amidst all the chaos
And stillness
And uncertainty;
Somewhere between all the quiet
Moments and contemplations,
You had found a home in my heart.

In that moment,
I realized that there was nothing
That I wanted more
Than to lay next to you on the
Chilled ground,
And let our souls speak all the words
That we never needed to say out loud.

It was then that I knew,
That I loved you,
That I wanted to love you
As large as the universe,
As bountifully as the stars,
Until our spirits became celestial.

Will I ever be enough?
Or is it that I’m too much?
Either way, I’m always something,
Something that makes me
Unworthy of love
Or of loyalty
Or of sticking around.

Will I ever be accepted?
Or is it that I’m unacceptable?
I’ve got flaws,
But don’t we all?
Are my flaws all you see?
Is that the entirety of what makes me
Me?
Is that all I’m meant to be?

I never trust people
Because every time I flirt
With the idea,
I’m left here,
Asking myself again,
Am I too much and also
Somehow never enough?

People always leave,
And even when they stay,
They put conditions on the way
I’m supposed to be
In order to be worthy of that.

Does anyone see me?
Am I outwardly projecting,
Externally expressing
Who I am inside?
Can anyone hear me?
Am I talking to myself?
Is anyone listening?

Does anyone love me?
Can anyone love me
When I don’t even love myself?

And why don’t I?
If we’re all flawed,
Why are my flaws the only
Thing I see?
Why can’t I accept the totality
Of what it means to be me?
Where do I even begin?

My soul feels overwhelmed
With an intangible feeling
Of desperately wanting to love
And to be loved
And to make the world around me
Feel the way I feel.

It’s a love/hate thing that I have
With my interior;
I feel so inferior
Because I can’t control the constant
Stream.of.emotions;
I can’t be logical once my heart is involved.

I feel the 60% water that makes up
The human body;
Constantly drowning in a sea of
Feelings, my tide too strong
And ocean too deep.

I ask myself nearly every day
If there is anyway that I could just
Be someone else,
Just for a minute.
Couldn’t I just be someone who feels less,
Who is accepted more,
Who isn’t so alienated and complicated?
Can’t I just shrink away,
Lose a little bit of it,
Whatever it is?

I don’t know who I even want to be.
I just know,
Being me might be too much,
Even for me.

I can’t get your words out of my head
Syllable by syllable I’ve reread
Them a dozen times,
And now I contemplate why
And how I never knew
You felt how I do.

It’s 5:04 AM, as I lie awake going on hour number two.
I dreamt of you,
As I often do.

I always awake with a jolt,
The tangibility of your simulated self
Jarring,
My senses overstimulated as if we had touched for real.

When I ponder on you, on memories of us
In my conscious mind,
I have a difficult time stringing together
The details of you,
Years apart having left your image
Grainy and unfocused, although effervescent.

Yet when my eyes close,
You make your way clear into focus,
Every detail of your physical and spiritual form so vivid
As if I’m really experiencing you,
As if you’re dreaming of me too,
And we’ve actually escaped to another reality
Where nothing has changed or faded.

Is this where we now reside?
The current version of us is no longer compatible with the software of reality,
Our data kept in the cloud
Where dreams are stored.

It isn’t real in the realness of reality,
But it’s so vivid, more lucid than a lucid dream,
That I can’t shake the feeling that I’m experiencing the real you
In the only form I’m now able to download.

I must’ve known you in a past life
You feel so familiar
Even when I didn’t know that I knew you
I knew
There was something in the way
The warmth radiated from your skin
Caramel macchiato I drank you in
The baritone of your laugh
You were so familiar
Yet we had just met
Your silhouette
Was one I had seen before
But not in this lifetime
Were you mine in another one?
Slipping through my fingers like silk
Always one grasp away
But you’re never gone
The way you remain like the rain
Soaking grass in spring
And I’m thirsty for you
For endless nights talking in darkness
Till light came in again
And never running out of words
But even as we spoke it felt so deja vu
Don’t I already know you?
How do you know me so well?
Like your code is written into my cells,
I feel you on a molecular level
Your soul intertwined in mine
But never fully actualized in this timeline
Years and years come and go
But your “aww” and chuckle never fade,
I hear it like you smiled that way you do
Like it was yesterday
Time a construction that doesn’t function
In the realities in which I know you
I have known you
You’ve been mine and I yours
In lifetimes before
In present, eyes closed I manifest
My me’s and your you’s
Subconscious whispers traveling
Through time and space
Dimensions unknown
But I know
It’s you and you know
It’s me too.

All these years later,
All the sunrises and sunsets,
All the sleeps, deep and unstirred,
And you still make your way
Into my dreams,
In razor-sharp focus;
I hear your voice as clear as
The last time I saw you,
The outline of your lips still drawn
Perfectly as I remember them
When they touched mine.
So long it has been,
But no time has passed in my subconscious,
Your appearance a steady and constant
Stream of subconsciousness
That my mind refuses to forget;
Or is it my heart
That won’t forget you?
I wonder when, if ever,
You will fade,
But then I also hope for never
As I rush off to sleep so I can
See you again,
Where you never left,
Where we never said goodbye,
Where you look exactly as you did
And make me feel as exactly as I felt,
Exactly as I feel.

You are not here
You are there
You are somewhere
You are not near

You are far
Here is not where you are

I am here
I am not there

You are everywhere
I am nowhere

I used to be there
Not the same as where
You are now
But where you used to be
There was you
And there was me
And there was we

We are not there
We are not here
We are not we

But you will always be
A part of me

Dear America,

I’m really disappointed in you. It’s a harsh way to start a letter, I know, but that’s truly how I feel.

Our leadership (if you can call it that) has unveiled the deep rooted White supremacy and sexism that this country was founded upon. And that means that there are enough people in this country that feel this way that a man like Trump was able to get elected, that a man like Mitch is able to run the show in Congress.

America as the land, it isn’t your fault. You would’ve been happy to never have been invaded, carved up, forced to be witness to slavery and war and watching your beautiful indigenous people die and be culturally erased (in many ways still today). You are beautiful, with your mountains and trees, your beaches and oceans, your rivers and streams.

You are ugly, though, with your systemic oppression, kids in cages, Black people shot by police, housing segregation, gentrification, fatphobia, mass incarceration, capital consumerism, transphobia, misogyny, lack of mental health and addiction support, no healthcare for all, no equal right to education without stock piles of debt, and you always make a way for the wealthy and White,  but you box out anyone Brown without extra expectations or attempted White washing. You pave ways and repave them, neglecting potholes and broken bridges for those that need, deserve, should have them more. You are the birthplace of internal wars, internalized sexism, colorism, homophobia, racism; you’ve made us hate ourselves as much as you hate us.

America, I expected better with the version of you I read in textbooks. But then, that version of you was written by those whose roads were paved with gold, and they profit from its retelling.

I don’t like you, America. I don’t know what hope there is for us, but I do know that I love my brothers, sisters, siblings of all genders, colors, and creeds who too want to unravel you, America, and build you back up into something better, something equitable, something for all of us.

Maybe there’s hope for you, America. Maybe there’s hope in your (r)evolution.

-Meg

When the air is crisp,
the smell of late autumn and early winter heavy in the air,
crackling leaves and tree pollens thick,
the light begins to slip away earlier each evening.

I peer into the meringue-streaked sky
through the rectangle frame of
my windshield,
and just like that,
my senses take me back
as if I had never left.

Stumbling home on sidewalks
stained by sick from too much fun,
or not enough,
the fun I had was nearly always the mask I wore
to conceal pain.

I remember the way the air smelled as I cried;
I remember the sound of pumps on asphalt as you screamed at me;
I remember the sensation of wood on knuckles as I struck the front deck in anger fully broken open,
like a mallet had cracked me from within my chest.

When I hear the first few notes of song after song,
together their own playlist of
memories wanted to be forgotten,
I'm the audience to a fade-in flashback.
Sometimes it happens so suddenly that I feel nauseous,
as if my body was physically ejected
from present to past,
from the totally inconspicuous to full-fledged trauma.

Even now, trauma is a ***** word
for the clash of happy smells and sounds
against their violently depressed
and repressed sentiments.
I struggle to understand how
my rapid fire of shells and casings,
my broken limbs and oozing wounds,
my PTSD ignites
within a glance at an orange horizon,
an inhale of firewood,
an echo of windy gusts shaking folded leaves from trees.

Autumn is a battlefield,
but so is winter, spring, and summer.
Every where I go,
every season that sneaks in
and fades away,
every night's sleep,
every new anxious thought;
you slither in the moments,
in between the trees,
circling round and round
waiting for the right sound or smell,
anticipating the sights unseen,
hiding within my senses,
eagerly springing to life
when I least expect it.

I exhale sharply
at 70 mph,
and I wonder when, if ever,
I will be
free.

I'm just going to start writing because
it's been so ****  long.
It's January and 70 degrees,
which is strangely beautiful,
something to which I can relate.

I wonder whether you can consider yourself
writer's blocked
if you haven't even tried to tumble the blocks over.

I'm not really sure why I stopped writing
or when exactly.
Maybe it's because I fell in love and found happiness.
Or maybe it's because I didn't want to
write out admissions that a perfect relationship doesn't exist.
Or, better yet, that even at my happiest,
my most in love,
there's still so much untouched darkness within me,
darkness that writing pretty words can't even make pretty
in the melancholic sort of way.

Maybe I haven't wanted to write because it's painful.
I can fake the lightness when I bury
myself
in  the world around me.
Saving problems for everyone else keeps me
from having to admit my own.

Maybe I've been blocking myself
from myself,
like if I go too deep,
peel enough back,
I may not like what I see.
Maybe I'll realize
I've been the one to blame all along.

If I write,
if words spill onto crisp white pages,
if ink bleeds from the tips of weathered hotel room pens,
if I release thoughts and feelings frozen
beneath strategically built, icy castles,
if I let go,
I may burst open too wide
and feel too much
and relive it all.

Even my newer, shinier,
stronger self
might not withstand
the force of that.

Perhaps I'll open the gate
and pray the reinforcements hold.

Of the two lamps in the room,
my glassy eyes can only tolerate the dimmed glow
of the lower light from the right,
my face basking in the slowly rotating,
barely blowing air from the fan above me.
My face feels flushed,
but not from the semi-sticky early summer heat,
but from the fact that
every time I come back to this room,
I'm reminded of why I left.

The lawyer in me could generate a list,
pros longer than any construction of cons,
yet your name will always reverberate
in the unforgotten corners of my subconscious.

You never loved me like I did you,
and even my romanticized version of you never
saw me the way I
still feel the ghost of you.

I can still feel the crisp fall air from your balcony
and recall the albums and conversations that
complete the track list
of my unrequited love story.

Sometimes it was real,
sometimes it's real,
sometimes it's a dream,
sometimes it's a memory.

And this is the essence of you and me;
it's more questions than answers,
smoke and mirrors and
smoking to make things clearer.

I've never been the same
since you,
but I also don't know how I can ever
get over someone I never really had.

You were mine in microcosms
that were macro extraterrestrial galactic;

was it real?
were we real or
was it all [science] fiction?

They say that time heals all
but time has come and
gone
and come and gone again
and I'm still raw,
unstitched,
not even scarred,
let alone healed.

If I close my eyes,
my body transports so easily to
the times and spaces we shared
and the times and spaces where
I waited for you,
for a response,
for you to appear,
for you to even give me a single
solitary
syllable,
but even that was too much.

The hands of clocks have grayed into
a new generation
and still whenever I take two steps toward
something better that voice of your
nothings tells me
I'm not enough
I'm not ready
I need more of things I can't even
identify.

The more I know myself
the more I question why
I was never enough for you,
and I wonder if me 2.0
still wouldn't be enough for
whichever version of you that's been
installed.
Would you know me now?
Do I know you now?
Am I still not enough?
Is that what I'm striving for?

The door is closed,
but the doubt
is always
o p e n
for debate.

I tasted a lingering shot of ****** *****
on my tongue
before my mouth tasted
the rest of the night.
I pretended that I was
much drunker than I was
because I thought that would
make it easier,
less painful.
I gave myself a pep talk
and should've understood
that nothing wanted
needs convincing.
I've suppressed the act so much
in my subconscious
that I only remember it in flashes,
like a slow motion replay of a life-ending
car accident you'd see in a movie.
In some ways,
that scened ended me;
the world was fuzzier
than it had been the night before,
when I woke up no longer wearing
my agency.
The normalcy with which I picked myself up
from the dingy navy couch
was underwhelming
and haunting all at once.
I left with my dress and my shame clinging to me,
fearing not for myself
or how I had said no so many times before,
but instead that
giving it all still wasn't enough for you;
losing myself,
unraveling my soul wasn't worth
what I thought it would sell for.
All I saw was
the satisfaction that I had given that didn't satisfy you.

An emptied shell;
you took it all,
and I've been hollow ever since.

I still can feel it when I close my eyes.

When I sleep, I am
trapped in a translucent space
where memories meet nightmares,
and it always lingers when
I wake.

The shame burns my insides
worse than any anger could
because even the nightmare
version ofyou
still gaslights me.

I have spent years building a persona
that projects strength so that
I can convince everyone
I would never have let that happen to me.

I am still trying to convince myself
because it's too painful.

Abuse is a ***** word and the others
that follow feel
       even
                dirtier than what
                                         you did to me.

I feel complicit.
I'm a co-conspirator in my own worst
living memory nightmares.

I was weak.
I said yes when I wanted to say no.
I gave in
      again and
                again and
                            again.

If my nightmares were a scene from a movie,
I would, on split screen, have
grabbed my own hand
and tugged myself into my own
horror, "it'll be okay, Meghan."
My subconscious is unrelenting,
unforgiving,
incomprehensible, undeniable
            you are a
    [stupiduglyworthlessspineless]
                        vict­imscratch that
                 survivorscratch that
       human ^tortured
         by            yourselfscratch that
                               him.
Ididthistomyselfscratch that
                                                      He did this to me.

I stare blankly at the
bathroom wall
where the tiled portion
meets the faded blue paint
as it soaks in...
I liked it

The years of unrequited love,
the chase for affection,
the tortured artist
twisted up in twisted tortured
feelings

I spent year writing
dark poems,
letting the liquid manifest as a physical representation
of the tears shed
and bleeding heart.
Did I like it?

My existence was
wandering streets alone,
getting lost in melancholy songs,
wondering if love equated pain.

Then I found
what I told my notebook
I'd been searching for all along.
Someone loves me,
someone gives me love,
and I spent so much time searching for it,
enjoying the hunt and
getting gratification out
of my own self-deprecation
that I'm lost even though I'm found.

Do I like it?
Did I like that?
Do I like this?

I can't seem to decipher
affection and how it's supposed to
make me feel
versus how it does.
Did I like looking for it more than having it?

Am I so ****** up that
I love not receiving love more than receiving it?

I don't want to run; I want to stay;
I always used to run
to
     and away.

I have forgotten what
it feels like to be
loved.
It is so odd and
most definitely sad,
as I still know so
substantially what it
feels like to
love.
My existence is so
unrequited,
for even when you
again shared your
body with me,
even though two years
time had passed since
our last dance,
the wall you built remained intact.
I searched every surface
in hopes of finding a crack
in the stone that,
with some effort,
could finally help me to
topple the blockade.
But your love,
or what I have (probably pathetically)
convinced myself
exists on the other side,
it is as well-protected and
well-hidden as ever.
So I soldier on,
fighting my losing battle,
feeling love for you,
the love from which
I am doomed to be destroyed,
shot down, blood staining the
ground
beneath me,
no shield of your love
with which my body,
my heart,
could remain intact.

The way that you look at me
Takes my breath away
It feels extraterrestrial
From another dimension
As if I’m living another being’s life.

The way that you look at me
Lights me up like kerosine
While simultaneously freezing my body into goosebumps.

The way that you look at me
Make me look at myself differently;

I love me more in loving you
I love me more in you loving me.

Sometimes I think he’s too good for me
He’s too kind
And there are all these words
That come out of my mouth like
*****
Because I’ve been alone so long and
Don’t know how to just let him be nice to me.
I am controlling,
But he’d insist I’m fiercely independent.
I am difficult,
But he’d tell me to never change.
The day after we had met,
He had said just that,
Yet I am constantly wanting to do the opposite.
I’ve spent so many years blaming myself for my own abandonment
That this all seems like a strange but beautiful dream.
Even so, somehow,
with just two words in the quiet of the morning,
He makes me feel like everything




“Hey, beautiful.”

An insatiable hunger
that rips at my insides;
the more I get, the more
still I'm left wanting.

Mostly served in snacks,
rarely a full meal,
but I want you in five courses
with a glass of wine to pair.

I crave your
lips and fingers on my neck;
salivating at the sound of your voice.

I am famished for every inch of your body, starved for the  intricacies of your mind, ravenous for the layers of your soul.

I yearn for another taste of you,
each moment somehow more delicious than the last.

I am paralyzed by fear.
I am paralyzed by doubt.
I am paralyzed by the questions I don't want but need to ask.
I am paralyzed by the answers I don't want but need to know.
I am paralyzed staring at my pillows as my body hangs sideways off of the bed.
I am paralyzed by the feelings I almost wish I had never felt.
I am paralyzed by my past.
I am paralyzed by past lies and how they're seeping into my present psyche.
I am paralyzed by the love that I've felt.
I am paralyzed by the potential love I'm now unsure I want to feel.
I am paralyzed by the future, by what it holds.
I am paralyzed by you.

I saw her in the most perfect sunset
And then there she was in the fullest moon;
She is gone,
Yet she still fills the room.

How long does it take
for the urge to fade?

I still
search for shelter in your
words and phrases

but there is nothing more written
on those pages.

Inside I feel so big,
My feelings are so big,
But I am always left to
Feel like I'm small,





I am so small.

If a picture is worth
a thousand words,
is a memory worth
a million?

I am rich in words.

And in letting you go,
I have been struck with perhaps
the greatest melancholy
in that I have started to forget
the sound of your voice

You're a cigarette and I
can't find a patch.
You taste foul in my mouth,
my tongue is dried out and my
words taste like tar as your
name rattles out;
I feel sickly satisfied as I realize
I have nothing else to scratch my itch.

You are
You have always been
a bad habit.

I quit.

I once read that
there is a wrinkle in time and
ever since I've sought to
parse out the clock's seconds and
feel every whisper of wind on
my skin and
sneak glances at sunrises through
blinds and
taste snowflakes and rainstorms and
wrinkle my nose at
good and bad smells in
Time's wrinkle and
gaze at moonlight twinkle.

I got over you and then
realized there was no one
to get over to
and allowed you
to reside in the
forgotten corners of my mind;

you're nothing to me, but
you were everything, but
everything became nothing, but
I made that nothing
everything for
fear of being nothing
without you.

I want more than I need and
I feel nothing when I bleed;
finding feelings I buried
six feet deep and I see
the things I neglect to feel
in my sleep

High strung off
loose ends,
constructed of foundation
condemned,
I am the puzzle with no edge pieces,
my crying is tearless;

Is it possible to be terrified and
also fearless?

My body
feels small as I
stare at the the cracks in the
ceiling and
I am so small in my
loneliness,
my body shrinks and my
eyes glaze;
sandpaper tongue
and dry eyes
breathing stale air
and the cycle goes over and over
crumbling and
cracking and
splintering,
stumbling in darkness, my
body numb and also

Aching.

I'd ask where you are but
I don't even
Know who You is and that
is perhaps the most
painful part.
Or maybe it's that I'm so
        alone
in my loneliness(no one quite
seems to recall
t heir I solation)

Trees and grapes
I resolve to not need to
solve it;
I need no u's and
know you's

I
looked on at a
yellow sky,
creamy meringue;
peppered with
feathers and wings,
the lemonade stage
for the black bird dancing.

Crisp November winds and
overheated toes,
I lost my head in the
music on the
dimly lit road.

And still,
in the complete silence,
the universe
whispers your
name
and I
stretch out my fingertips,
searching for
you in the
overwhelming

darkness.

"I'm writing to you from a distance like a pen pal."


My war letters remain unanswered.
Sincerely,

Not yours,
Truly.

It absolutely amazes me,
the dichotomy of how
you can make me feel so special and
unique
and simultaneously
leave me feeling so desperate and
cheap.

You are the best and the worst,
the source of my greatest joy and
deepest sorrow,
and I am sick in my desire to
not feel these extremes;
I am sick in my desire to
not
feel
anything.

It's time
to get off
this ride.

Sometimes I prefer
sleeping to waking,
for in my dreams
our love is
without complication.

I put on my glasses to
refocus my vision,
but I realize it is my distracted mind
that hinders me,
work documents transposed with your face,
my mouth still filled with your taste,
your body still bruised into me and
your skin still stuck to my fingernails;
my body aches for your touch,
my ears yearn for the feeling of your teeth,
my mouth hungry for your lips;
my eyes stare blankly at my computer monitors as
my brain remains transfixed on the way
we intertwine and
how you make my limbs shake;

I'm not sure my boss will understand
that 8 hours a day has gone by,
and all I have managed to accomplish is
the perpetual fantasizing of the way you make me sweat,
the way you take away my breath,
how you disassemble me.

And somehow I have
slipped into a state where
my dreams were realities and
my realities will be my dreams...

I left, and nothing was the same;
I came back, and everything was the same.

I've changed, but you haven't;
this thing between us hasn't changed,
or has it?

You remain transfixed on the games,
and even after months of silence,
you expect me to play;
and I get a thrill off of saying no,
which admittedly is my own way of playing back.

I don't know whether I love you or hate you more,
but homecoming also means coming home to that dichotomy,
to resisting urges and old patterns,
to hoping you've finally figured out where I'm at,
that your path has met mine,
that you've changed with time.

These roads feel the same but also
like they belong to a life I no longer know;
new tracks on new albums make the soundtrack for the drive,
and you attempt to wedge yourself amongst lyrics of redemption
and desire.

I need you to let me go
but want you to come with me;
I need to live the new life I've built
but am haunted by past fantasies;

when I come home,
it can't be to you,
and when I leave,
I'm leaving you too.

I remind myself of
all the bad things you did
so that I can convince myself
to stop missing you;





Yet I go on missing you anyway...

When glass shatters,
all you can do is
pick up the pieces.

When we shatter,
all we can do is
pick up the pieces.

Things remain broken
only if we choose not to
fix them.

I'm freezing cold as my
insides burn,
my body lapped up by
flames of frustration and feelings of failure;

lonely in the most crowded of rooms,
fighting to find meaning in a city full of answer keys,
the most educated of the inexperienced and the
least successful of the most ambitious;

adventuring in ambiguity,
road tripping with no map,
the drive is long, the horizon lost in the sea of darkness;

sleeping passes time,
but the past's vivid dreams seem harder to find;

where am I (fromnowgoingheadedstranded)?

I am exhausted of
feeling exhausted.
I am emotionlessly emotional.
I am hopelessly hopeful.
I am sitting still at 1000mph.

Sometimes I play a game
when I walk down the sidewalk or
I cross the street or
I descend the stairs or
I exit the elevator or
I squeeze onto the crowded train or
I choose a seat on the bus;
I refuse to alter my route,
to change my footing,
to look down or away;
I am unabashed and fearless;
and not one time,
not one single time in the hundreds of times
I have played,
have I ever lost;
my path is always clear,
my victory always uncontested,
because I make it so.

Lying motionless on the sofa,
eyes fixated on the gray and purple cat clock perched on the mantle,
watching apathetically as the second hand
click click clicks,
stuck in place as the hour and the minute hands
sit sit sit,
as if intentionally to keep time from passing;
sit sit sitting
lie lie lying
stuck in place,
disappointment
click click clicking
in my mind,
so debilitated that
I can't even feel the passage of time,
the clock intentionally refraining from counting minutes so are empty.

And even when my mind is foggy
And my eyes are glazed

Your image remains as clear as ever.