A love letter to my distractions, requited or otherwise
by @welshshortbread
Steel yourself for the inevitable surprise
New ties knotting round your neck till you choke
Go for broken hearted again
Go for finished unstarted again
Fall in love for the feeling of falling from infinite heights
The rush of death grabbing at your clothes like a desperate lover trying to take you in.
The air wrapping round your limbs
For a moment you are
Suspended
Frozen in a fantasy:
A collage of red eyes and tendrils of smoke, the smell of fresh rain, resonating harmonies, the fretting curl of a tongue around a barbed remark, and now this-
Shit shirts and shadows
This feels like remembering a dream when you fall out of sleep
Chasing through fog
Stumbling through memories of feeling like I wasn’t worth your time
That all I could aspire to was sunflower following you
Turning east to west
But feeling rooted to the spot
All tongue and talent lost
In the shadow of your apathy.
This feels less like fate
And more like I’m butterfly-catching
Sticking pins through anything beautiful
Trying to understand what makes it soar unaided for so long
And killing it in the process.
Other times, I am the butterfly,
Catching light until I’m trapped
My affection becomes a museum for you
To bring your children into, someday.
Because nothing can stop my descent
I am not iridescent to all of you
And maybe I know that
Maybe that’s why I choose you
The safety of a glass window to hide behind
And the familiar crunch and snap of bones As I hit the rocks beneath.