i see you. those remarkable features tucked in by the structure i crave. i love your face. but it contains that expression of yours that i can't trust.

if i tell you to tell me what's wrong, will i regret it?
because your expression now tends to look like the last page in a book i fell into, got dizzied by, and lost myself into

and my heart sinks to ground me back and hold me closer to the reality around me. once i finish reading you it's back to it now

i can't force myself to finish reading your face
if i finalize the dawn of this nightmare, and fully enter this cue to leave and put down this book
i accept the aftermath. tonight's energy will be an all-consuming emptiness
tonight i will feel nothing else but this
tonight i will cry to fill the hours because nothing else feels right
but mourning, mourning, and more of the mourning
all the way till morning! all the way till night!

then tomorrow i will call in sick at work.
i know i will not get up to shower, or throw away tear-stained tissues (of which there will be at least 53)
i know i will have a few missed calls from my mom and a lot of from my grandmother. i know my brother will drop by to tell me to call them back - someone, anyone. i know i will send him back there and he will hate me for the way i am. he will tell me this and i will use it as fuel to cry some more.
i know my best friend will leave me a few texts. i know some people, probably on the other side of the world, will remember they haven't checked up on me in a while and will probably decide to do so. i know they expect me to tell them i'm doing well (it's the polite thing to say), i know it would surprise them if i told them how i was really doing.

i know the world is busy and it will not stop because my world has.
i know this, and i know this, and i know this.
i see you, and i've read too many books about these kinds of endings, so somehow i have a good inclination as to what might follow. but i am a hopeless romantic -- at least, i am a hopeless literary, i am the girl who believes real life is ugly but real life in poetry can be beautiful.

so i hope, in the midst of the real life ugliness, that i can write some real life poetic beauty.

after i've finished crying tonight.