the birds are flying backwards
(you and I are still together)
the fish swim on land
(you unpack your bags)
the attic is below ground
(you walk into my room)
the sky is red
(you tell me you always loved me)
the grass is gray
(you tell me you still do)

Swirling in my head
A white noise screaming
But stuck quietly
Softly seeming

One moment
And ten all glued together
Stuck up all in a knot
A noose neck tether

What do I make of it
A tangled chest of something
Rattling and clanging
I fear it to be nothing

This is entirely your fault
A song stuck in my head
Playing on a messy loop
I can't even go to bed

I held you once
And once again
Messy unkempt emotions
I leave myself to pain

And silent sealed lips
You shall never hear of this
I'll stew and roll over
And hope the emotions miss

Ignore the way I look at you
It will leave if given time
It was a kindness for you to hold me
It does not make you mine

I'll pray that time may stop
Just for a second or more
To etch your eyes into my soul
Before you walk out the door

This may be simple loneliness
But your smile lights the room
I'll catch it just one more
And accept bittersweet doom

Stagnant, though I've made all this progress.
Recently thinking makes it hurt more,
but for a moment today
I really put the pieces together.

This painful youth, there was a fire raging inside
and it hurt and it made my heart race.
Today I tried to pick up where I left off

and

and?

and I watched it crumble in my hands?

Confused, I took a hard look, and that fire had gone out.
Disbelief.
His name still rings in my mind infrequently, all on its own.
Those sweet memories still in striking detail, I reach for them.
A moment of reunion, a moment.
And you feel stupid for never realizing you'd miss that time,

that you.

And, you know, I've never been closer to all that I've worked for.
And I couldn't care less, I've never felt more empty.
I'm so alone and it'll be a long long time before I ever feel something like that again. If I ever do.
I didn't need to love him to feel that kind of shame.
Every investment I made in my new freedom this summer made me creep back inside myself, slowly, until drinking and dressing up became a new trauma.

The fire was something to live for,
now I just feel like a rectangle.

Sometimes I feel so sad that I think my face will melt.
My tears come down dissolving everything that is me, everything recognizable and leaving only vestige of what once was.