rays of light strike the wall where a window should be. the hurricane is over, we haven't yet taken down the boards.
the thing about the storm is how exhausting it can be. it can take so much out of you that all you can muster is enough energy to think. hours expended in forceful trance don't quite seem like hours at all.
more like something else entirely.

i rest my head on the back of a ratty couch. there's a coffee table before me that i'd like to prop my feet on if only i had the strength to. i notice Elizabeth cross legged atop it. she's smaller than i remember. not in the way of height or weight, but in a way i can't quite put my finger on. she looks straight through the boards on the window, though i feel her gaze on me.

a few minutes have gone away. following their departure, Elizabeth turns to me and asks,
"do you remember me from somewhere?"

Splish Splash with Tired arms
Inhale Exhale with Tired breath
Yell and Argue with Tired coach
Whine and Complain with Tired swimmers
Loud Static from a Tired radio
Bubble and Pour from a Tired coffee ***

At the pool,
sound became music, and music
a Tired cane for them to rest their weary limbs

In this body, my soul screams
A cry so deeply embedded in my chest my  veins run dry
Do the words exists? To describe a soul so taunted
A sick, dry, maddening feeling
A life to live, yet here I am
A screaming soul
Torn

So far I’m trying my best
and my best *****
It ***** that my effort will never amount to much
It ***** that I am destined to live a life of mediocracy, In a world of burning passion
It ***** that my heart beat so fast,  In a body of sinking spirits
So far I’m trying my best

My ears hear static
The sirens so loud
I open my mouth to scream
But the words won't come out

My stomach knotted
The falling sensation won't stop
Nausea fills my chest
I try and take a deep breath

As all my warning signs go off

Begin, become when you take a left.

Feel that's right.
Therapy.
Say that you're alright.
That it's the kind.
Of see through.
Of assuring.
The peace.
Within each other.
Unreal the nervousness.
Crossing legs.
Holding still.
You know.
Filling weariness in the snow.
As it was under that street light.


Garrett Johnson.

i used to spend a long time with you and thinking about you.
i would write and sing yarns and threads of your life.
we busied ourselves for hours, days, away from
just about whatever it was that kept me sad.
it seems like a lot of years have passed
and even though we're still so close
it seems more and more like i,
just can't spare the effort to.
i love you and always will
don't think that changes
but i can't write letters
or play pretend with,
all my secret friends
i just feel tired yet,
not forgotten or
alone or lost or
is there a way,
an expression
of how wiser
but without
motivation
i feel now?

maybe just
fully lucid
and aware
the clarity
of a mind
only idle
that life
my life
wasn't
worth
much
at all.
how
sad.

and that it wasn't worth the fatigue it took to get here. but what can i do? i am at a dead-end, there is nowhere to go. if i write a longer line, i break the trend. the trend wasn't even very good to begin with. i think a few of those lines are too long for the pattern. i spent some minutes trying to resolve them but i wasn't satisfied.

in truth, though it often takes that idled age to realize, past the self-conscious judgement and harsh, masochistic self-critique
the point is not to be unique or force anything.
it's to express the heart,
because that's not something anyone gets to do very often, especially not to strangers.

if i've gone long past being frightened of death or spiders, i'd expect some words to not spur my anxiety so much.

anxiety is just that; fear of my, your own unreasonable expectations
not the fear of being ridiculed, or the complex fear of success;
not even a fear of being hated, or forgotten and never remembered
it's the fear of never being known to even be forgotten
that awful dreadful horror of not being noticed at all.
not becoming stronger as an individual, but less.
and it can be fatal.