#compartmentalize
I'm seeing you tonight
And it's been quite a while
Four days to be exact
I remember a time when
It drove us crazy
To not see each other most days
I act like I don't care
Sometimes it feels like I don't
But I feel the sadness looming over me
How can I not when
I know I want to see you more?
Life isn't that easy though
It's best not to feel
Not to care
A self-protective coping mechanism
That lets me function as human again
I'm nervous to see you
I don't know how I'll feel and
If I really am compartmentalizing
I know it doesn't hold up
When I'm laying next to you
I don't want to want you this much
I still want to be with you though
Just not so invested
It's unsafe
It's uncontrollable
And as someone who needs to feel
A variation of both of those
I'm terrified that seeing you
Will destroy these walls I've built
Until I'm left with nothing but
Myself
and
My feelings
Mar 29, 2018
Mar 29, 2018 at 2:56 PM UTC
My heart weighs heavy
Tipping this scale so far
Until I hit the ground
So unsure if it's the alcohol
Or these feelings
That keep me so far down
I just want to breathe
And I want to hold you
But I don't know what that means
I compartmentalize my feelings so much
All tucked sweetly away in the empty crawl spaces
Until I look in the mirror and don't know who I see
I want to feel something
Anything but this sadness leaking out
Of all the holes in all the closed doors
My mind is a maze without a map
Even though I've created it myself
I still don't know the ceilings from the floors
How can I look at your face and not hear her words?
"Just stop hurting people" she says
Trust me baby all I do is try
I try so hard to not leave scars on these beautiful souls
My instinct is to help the broken
Though as soon as I'm ready to leave they're ready to die
Babe I promise that I see you
I haven't known you long but that's never been the issue
The problem is that I can't see myself
I'll feel this love for someone one minute
And the next I could ice them out for days at a time
Left to wonder if it's actually me or just the liquor off the shelf
I don't believe in God but I'm praying now
Begging someone to help salvage this broken soul
Yet I'm still surrounded by silence
In this life you have to save yourself
But we all need help sometimes
And too much pressure leads to self-directed violence
I'm trying so hard
I just want to be ok
I just want to be free
Then I get nights like these
Choking on this random sadness
Left to question if this life is really for me
But I'm trying
And I'm growing
And this will pass one day
I just hope until then
You love me enough
To want to stay
Mar 29, 2018
Mar 29, 2018 at 4:19 AM UTC
I. I cannot seem to picture holes in my body like most
people do. That popular metaphor they use to represent
loss. I think of those cardboard boxes that come in different
shapes, displayed in bookstores. Those you don't especially
need but feel like walking away with like they've
always been yours. One resembles an emptied
pool, another like a cake eaten so carefully, the sponge
remains barely intact, imitating a box. And yet, for some
reason, you don't want to put anything in them. They look appealing
as they are, empty. When a friend loses something, maybe a
blown-off cap, I picture a green oblong box neatly caved
in his crown, through his skull. I can't visualize a hole, or
a collapsed floorboard, nor dug-out soil. Assorted colored
boxes in odd shapes, at different locations and time, fitting
flawlessly, like an expensive upgraded sink, through people's
body parts. Sometimes I picture them with a lid on but
they're still visible: an obvious bright patch of cardboard ingrained
in someone's palm, or at one side of another's abdomen.
II. Holes, usually from gunshot, are intentionally plumbed
by nature and open till the other end. True loss, to become
irretrievable, has to have an element of reach and is then
restricted by space—tracing inevitability. You lose a phone
and you search through the rectangle case by your thigh,
and seize nothing, there's only cardboard and skin.
III. You lose someone. But an entire
box the shape of your body can't possibly replace you
or your whole skeletal system would pop out. So you imagine
that loss, an open cocoon, as a single organ—a heart, or
at least half of it. You can't tell whether that side is capable
of beating, but when you knock on it, it sounds the same. You feel that compartment in your chest and it's all solid and compact,
maybe even scratchy. You reach and your hand doesn't go
through. Of course, it never arrived like a bullet. You deliberately
chose to put something in that box. And as much as you
rather wanted to see that bright ear-shaped box empty, leaving
it's contents to imagination, you compromised, thinking
half a heart wouldn't take too much space. And losing
that person, you think back on the day you first got the
box. It was never meant to be filled, you imagine. It looked
better on a shelf behind glass among other colored boxes:
firm as new and all equally fragile, maybe even
bearing a scent or taste. I believe this is one way to cope with loss,
by disassociating it—turning it into a pretty spectacle you'd want to
buy but don't, just another section one passes in a mall.
Apr 29, 2017
Apr 29, 2017 at 10:55 AM UTC
1 4
she offers me, a spot of dust
she raises me under the couch,
on platitudes and warm bread I know it’s
in return for my devotion there
she loves me like the boats today, I start spring-cleaning,
she keeps out on the ocean (this alone
she loves me to be molded, should receive
not to be unfolded more recognition than it will)
I pull out the couch
she bore me bones the vacuum doesn’t quite
the lacrimal bone reach the dust lying
the breastbone on unused carpet,
all the cervical vertebrae the head
I use them to simulate keeps hitting the wall
her expectations unproductive
I put the furniture back
2 in place
I have names, no one will see the lack
I wear them like badges of progress
inspired by something not quite
earned yet 5
while lucid dreaming
I assigned constellations were on
each name my skin
a compartment and freckles in
of me the night sky
If I name them maybe
they will become pollution drowned out
real, not just necessary two thirds
even if most imploded
before they were seen
3 6
with enough necessity were it not for shadows
anyone can tell a lie I would surely learn to
hate the light
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 6:43 PM UTC