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when my final record plays,
will death stop and watch me
as i dance one last dance?
will he take my hands,
and spin around with me?
will he clap when it's done?
would he for anybody?
monochrome boy keeps a little stash of blue in his eyes. well, at least most of the time. i told him once that there was a sweet, warm sort of sadness about him, and amongst his greyscale i saw an unfamiliar glimpse of the most becoming wildflower yellow.
he's lovely
it's awful foggy this morning,
on the lawn and in my mind.
out for a quick smoke before dawn,
right on time for the daily grind.
my head is filled with bleary dread,
all i wants to be sleeping instead.
you open your mouth and
i want to sew mine shut.
turn my way to speak and
i turn the other cheek.
i don't want to hear you and
i don't want to see you.
words are too static and
you're too erratic for
this to even continue.
sometimes,
or maybe often,
i reach out for things i dont want.
namely advice. words of wisdom.
i already know what they'll say,
and it just seems pointless to ask,
but i do it to seem human,
or maybe to feel like such,
and grit my teeth as they recite,
word for grueling word,
advice i've already heard
from myself.
i found an old picture today of my only grandmother, the one i all but forgot. she was small, but spoke in a mountainous voice and had a laugh like rolling thunder, even after sixty years of smoking. all the women in my family are small, smoke, and have wonderful booming laughs.

she hugged me too tight once when i was six or seven and dislocated my shoulder. she broke out in that seismic laughter when she popped it back in place and i cried for just a second, said i was a tough little bit. that's my last clear memory of her.

my grandmother died after a major stroke when i was nine, or maybe eight. i did not cry at the funeral we held in her nursing home. as an adult, i wonder why. i listened to the tiny assembly, and to my mother breaking down, day drunk and just messy with grief, but i stared at the aviary the entire time and did not shed one tear.

they kept finches for the old ladies to feed and talk to, and i always loved them. my nan did, too. years back, a peppery white society finch got named "little bitty," after me, and when we found out he was actually a he, we laughed our big matching laughs.

i'm in my twenties now and completely forgot about that wonderful woman until i dug out a dusty, stained polaroid of her and my pregnant mother at a christmas party in the nineties. suddenly i'm remembering every little moment i spent with her and crying like a child over a box of forgotten family relics. i realised just then, face a mess of tears and snot and attic dust, that i forgot along with her the only bright parts of my childhood.

i will never be able to tell her how thankful i am for her influence. she alone instilled in me that i am, indeed, a tough little thing. she was more motherly to me than mine ever was or will be, and i didn't even cry at her funeral, which had a grand assembly of six people. my mother and i were the only family members present, the rest were her friends from the home. i suspect most of them are passed by now, they were all upwards of eighty back then, and i know my mom has no space in her *****-pickled brain for her late mother anymore. so, i will think of her instead. her tiny, work weathered hands and her giants laugh, her foul mouth and bright eyes, her wonderful golden heart.

i miss you, nan, and i hope you knew how much i loved you even though i was too socially inept as a child to say it. i am proud to bear your resemblance, proud of my iron grip and sailors vocabulary. i hope with a fierceness that i will have half the fire you did when i leave this world, and i hope to also leave such an imprint on someone who really needed it.
is this even poetry? i dont know
excuse the lack of structure here, im still crying and did the entire time i wrote this.
i know it’s not actually any of my business, but i noticed that you're sighing an awful lot lately,
and you just look so tired and upset that i have to ask: are you alright?
if not, how can i help?

and i see it, this rapidly morphing display of emotions behind your eyes.  i know what it is without a seconds doubt because i do the same thing when faced with these questions.

first, you soften ever so slightly with the smallest notion. that ‘god yes, i need a hand here,’ look.

but is turns corrective as you think,
‘but, that would be too selfish to ask.’
this look is bitter.
i feel it more than i see it.

then, at the last moment, your eyes speak so loudly of defeat that i could hear them from across the building if i were listening hard enough,
and my hearing is quite poor.

but, even so you say
yeah, no, no.
i’m alright, love.
just not sleeping much,
what with work and all.
thank you,
anyway.

and it’s so **** hard not to shout defeat, myself, faced with something i so deeply empathize with,
yet still am unable to aide.

stop smiling for me.
we’re so filthy with grief and doubt that we lie to each other for no reason.
stop thinking that simply because i have pain, yours is
inoperable, redundant,
non-noteworthy.

if you are hurt, please cry, or scream, or do anything besides smile because to me it just looks like a sad mask.

all i see is myself in that, and you know how much i despise myself.

i want you to tell the truths i already sense, for your own sake. even if you don’t want advice, for the love of whatever benevolent god is listening, let me at least hear your burdens.

spill your guts so i can help you clean up the mess the way you always help me with mine.

signed,
your extremely worry-sick friend.
this is very unlike anything ive written in ages and is obviously very personally pointed, but i needed to get this out
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