I can’t decide which part is worse.*

4 am, lying restlessly awake, feeling like I’m in some sort of heart free-fall, every fiber of me reaching for you and the mirage of what I want us to be.

Or

Sitting across from you in a room with friends, my stomach in knots, trying to keep my smile as smooth and cool as yours seems, working so hard to pry my mind off of memories of you and I.

Or

When we’re finally alone and the strained conversation is swallowing me like a black hole inside my chest, ******* from the inside out, the gulf of sentiments we won’t venture painfully widening the creeping chasm between us.

Or

Those songs on the radio that remind me of you, telling of what we have been, what we could be, their rhythms stirring up the strangest ripples of longing and regret and panic and isolation.

Or

The quiet moment when I catch your eye and try to read between the lines of your words and gestures, searching your receding depths for hidden traces of this same torture, wondering with mixed hope and fear if that longing still burns deep in you.

I can’t decide which is worse.

To endure it and hope it gets better.

**Or to leave and know it never will.

I lay beside you at night and hear you breathe
measure the slow way your inhale fuels your exhale
I lay awake and wonder
what it might be like to lay in a bed without you there
Your hushed and heavy breathing
has become a rhythmic and haunting reminder of our union
Once bliss to my ears
the knowledge of never having to be alone
this night music haunts me now
I run all day
run from the reality of my anxiety
run from the feelings about us I don’t want to feel
I run all day
but when I lay next to you
I cannot escape the tearing longing to be elsewhere
I have seen what my eyes were not meant to know
I have tasted a fruit that leaves all other food bitter in my mouth
I must eat and drink of our love
the sustenance to which I ascribed myself in matrimony
But now I lay beside you and hunger and thirst for another life
the rough bonds of our union chaffing against my flesh
cutting into my heart with tough circles
and tight knots
When the silence comes
I hear your breathing
and I fear these bonds will strangle me
shudder at the pressing doubt
that these coils will ever again feel like security
With the sun I dream of futures for myself
I busy myself with tasks and assignments
goals and lists
appointments and responsibilities
so much that on good days
I can almost forget that I am bound
Yet every night the rising moon signals me
I must return “home”
the place we now share and call ours
jabbing at me that I am not my own
I will never again be my own

Sleepless my mind churns
surveying the debris of a bomb
I hadn’t intended to detonate
hadn’t truly realized was a bomb

Sometimes, I guess, when you’re playing with fire
you can get lost its flickering glow
the way the flames dance so lovely around one another
the mesmerizing swirl of spark and smoke
the welcoming warmth like hands on your cheeks
pulling you slowly closer…
you can get so lost you forget
that fire burns, consumes, ravages, destroys
leaving only dust

Now I’m left in piles of ash and debris
each ***** remnant bearing the glaring mark of my guilt

When you lose what is dear
grief is the natural response
When you are the one responsible for that destruction
grief becomes a speck of dust
in the auditorium of loss and shame and pain

I wade slowly through the shards of a shattered reality
each cutting deeply at the growing void of hurt within
I have forgone the seeking of comfort
abandoned my search for a salve to soothe the sting

I wander through a town of broken people
beginning to bustle again with life
If they’re living
why do I feel so dead inside?

I walk and wave
inhale the dust of what I’ve destroyed
I hope desperately
that if I look enough like them
play the part well enough
then it will become reality

“I’m doing great. Yeah, I’m mending up just fine. Never better!”

I lie with a smile
sell sweet half-truths to myself
so well I almost believe them

*But then the stillness comes
And your voice echoes in my head
and I can’t shake the hunger for you

The acrid smell of failure chases me
the sharp teeth of the thing nipping my heels

No matter how I run, it follows
the promise of exposure
a realization of something I already knew

The dance we do enables me to avoid it
day in and day out
floating just out of danger’s reach
a child in traffic, I’m never quite caught
But failure can’t be held off forever
Persistent, it pursues me
relentless
patiently waiting for me to falter
prolonging my agony until I succumb

Oh and when I do
the shame of being seen!

You promise it doesn’t matter
bathing me in sweet truths I know are lies
Sweet lies to which I cling
hoping desperately that
if I hold them tightly enough
engulf them with my being
shove them in the spaces inside me
into which they do not fit
that maybe then they will become
the sweet truths they are for you

Inches from me
you reach an arm around me
a gesture strained over the oceans separating our depths
I’m drowning in the doubts you can’t see

You reach to me on an island of isolation
but I’m surrounded by companions you can’t perceive
pressed on all sides

You’ve joined me in life
chosen me to walk beside
They’re your companions too now
but you look right through them
Ghosts you don’t believe in

The acrid stench of failure hangs from me
clouding the space between us
You breath deep
unwilling to sense the smell.

I carved a hole for you inside of myself
Making a space where you fit perfectly
I didn't even realize I was carving it
Day by day
I etched your space inside of me
Not realizing the void I was making
only knowing it's where you belong
...belonged...
It's a cozy nook
nestled in places I'd forgotten I had
a corner you will never be able to fill
aren't allowed to fill
I carved a hole inside of myself
and now I'm standing, gasping
holding the shavings of my insides
remainders I so gladly discarded
I try putting them back
try plugging the leak to stem the tide of emotions
but it's no use
they won't fit anymore
Nothing will fit anymore
The throbbing ache reminds me of mistakes
terrible mistakes, amazing mistakes
Mistake isn't the right word
I can't call those choices anything but missteps I wanted to take
wanted so badly to take
I pass you, see you, sense you
You haven't gotten any less intoxicating
My head is flooded with once tantalizing daydreams
swimming in sweet regrets, fractured futures, empty longings
come on in
the water's fine
You haven't gotten any less magnetic
I don't know yet how to live with this chasm I made
I hadn't meant to make you so much space
I inhale
the wind whistling through the jagged edges
of a hole I can't fill
At least now I have more air

Every night they come
slinking in with the stillness while I’m not looking
I’ve started keeping watch for them lately
but still they slip by
their teeth bared
fur standing on end
These lonely wolves prowl beneath my ribs
lurking ever nearer to my heart as the day wanes
drooling to devour the joys I’ve stowed away
I guard it as best I can
but who am I before this brood of vicious beasts
I am only one
my hands are small and they tremble so
I keep them at bay with scraps of artificial light
staving off their inevitable attack
with the uncomfortably bright glow of electronic screens
reaching at distractions
to keep my menacing mind busy.