Gone But Not For Rot

How gracefully are we suppose to step back into sanity? How hard do we fall when a relationship is broken? Do I boil and burn or sulk in sadness? Do I sit and stare and dwell into madness?

My heart aches and my focus breaks but I know that I must move on. If I sit too still my memory catches up with me but I can't run forever and I try not to remember all those moments of happiness.

I recite to myself that everything changes, life comes at us in stages. Whether we're ready or we're not, whether we've found what we've sought.

Third Grade

The church I grew up in had an annual cook-off where all the families would come together and camp on one large piece of forested private property. They had trail rides, tree swings, zip lines, outdoor movie theatres, and lots of chillie. The last one I can remember going to was in the third grade when I had a terrible crush on this little angle, Jillian Biglane.

This is the same girl who went to private school with me. After school, she and I would go across to street to where the sixth and seventh graders would practice track and cross-country. I remember one day trying to impress her by keeping up with her while running backwards. To put it bluntly, we don't run like that for a reason. I fell flat onto my back and hit my head on the hard caliche road.

That year at the cook-off, we snuck away from all our friends and the parents. We met, what felt like the background of the events, at the tree swing in the evening just as the stars started to sparkle. We were quiet, comfortable in the moment, and thrilled with delight. I pushed her and every returning swing, I smelt her shampoo scent. I wanted that moment to last forever. It was the first time I had chareshed time with a girl. It was the first time my hands got sweaty and I felt the unsettling pleasure of butterflies in my stomach. Inoccent, pure, and honest.

Cry Baby's Got Nothin' On Me

I don't cry as much now as much as I did when I was younger. I say "younger" instead of "child" because I was a sensitive teenager. I felt a lot of things I'd say most kids my age may not have even thought about. I didn't realize how taboo crying was until I really got to college.


Sometimes I'd lay in bed in my dorm and have an overwhelming feeling of sadness. It felt like all my tears for that night would come out as one big tear. It'd start from the corner of my eye by my nose and roll... down... my cheek. When if finally reached my lips, it would follow the crease in like a valley. And just when I thought that was going to be it, a second and third tear follow the same salty path the first one took.


Other nights I'd absolve my crying into a shower. The water would mute my tears but I was left with quiet pain at night. I'd lay there for hours wondering if I would ever fall asleep.


There would be days when I'm driving home from school and begin with a grimace. The expression seemed to get stronger as the magnetic emotion came over me. My eyes would bat and my vision would blur from the forming tears. I'd have to wipe my eyes like windshield wipers to see the road.


On some occasions, for no good reason, I would feel like crying. Not just crying, I would feel like bawling. 


I cried for the first time in a long time the other day. But it wasn't any more than two or three tears. I feel like my body's built a dam as I've grown up. As if the dam is so full, tears have begun to spill over. I just hope no one's around to see the dam collapse. I don't think they'd understand.

Self-contempt

I've been a beaten battered ship along the lonely coast. I've been a weak defense against the things I want most. I've been a hot and heated pot boiling within myself. I've been years of dust collecting on the shelf.  I've been words spread thin, dried out in the sun. I've been broken in and forced to run. I've been played like the family piano and trusted just the same. I've been known for nothing and labeled with that name. I've been sick of what I am and how long I've fought. I've been sitting here wondering how long I'll take to rot.

Arbitrary

I remember as a kid thinking about who I'd become when I grew up. I had standards for myself, like never to smoke or get drunk. I promised myself that when I become a dad, I'd never hit my kids or lose control and scream at them.

I used to have fantasies about living in a tree house and driving everywhere on a dirt bike. Other times I'd imagine everyone in the world just disappeared. I'd crews the streets in any car I wanted. I would go into a gas-station and take all the bubble gum and ice cream I wanted. I had taken into consideration that I might one day get lonely, so I stipulated in my dreams that people were only temporarily gone.

As I got older, my dreams matured and altered with me. I started dreaming of being alone on this earth, but with the entire female population. For some mysterious reason the entire male population vanished, leaving me the only man on earth. Now I'm fantasizing about getting a fulfilling job and traveling.

Yep, times change, or more accurately, time changes me. I don't hang out with the same friends, I don't have the same views as I did when I was a kid, and I don't have the same standards.

I don't know what all this means... probably nothing. But I recognize it and am self-aware.

Requite

The time lapses from cloudy and grey to sunny like May, and with many days comes the occasional rain. It floods the creeks and dams for weeks with washed up leaves and limbs. The bridge that burned seems trifling when nature takes its toll and fills back the hole. Like two magnates polar opposite, these two sides requite with earths deposit. A connection is made with sticks and rocks and stones and bones. These things are piled up from places unknown. It takes more work to keep from building up than to watch nature rebuild its own when left alone.

Omelette of Memories

You're closer than a friend
yet I held you at arms end.
I longed for our perfection
and hung myself on this perception.
Your face is stuck in my head
and all the words that you said.
About the moments we had,
both the happy and the sad.
I remember our growling tummies
and how the noises were funny.
We always worked up an appetite
from those long sleepless nights.
I wish I had recorded
the first time you farted.
Your face was so innocent
and I never did mention it.
You cared for me like nothing I've ever known,
as if I finally found my chimney home.
My heart for you to hold,
my loneliness bid and sold.
Exchanged for Sunday lit mornings
and the occasional snoring.

We were two eskimos spooning,
laying warmly in your bed.
Tomorrow always looming,
leaving lots of things unsaid.

I wish I would have told you
about the demons in my head.
Instead I let them brew
and watch confusion get fed.

Not sure if I should remember or forget,
I'm trying to learn without regret.
I put these memories on the shelf
and look at them when I doubt myself.
Days now are hard and hectic,
forgetting when times were scenic.
We used to talk for hours
and stay together even in showers.

You caught me broadside
that night at the party.
I sang and I cried
with my composure left faulty.

You hit me, hard right
the night of our fight.
You called me furious
but I was unconscious.

I woke up reviled,
tattered and maimed.
We reconciled
but it just wasn't the same.

I held on to that pain
to remember its name.
To hold it by the throat
and have it to quote.
So it never came around
and it caused me to drowned.
I held on with all things weighted
my failure I had already fated.
I say this now looking back,
it wasn't perfection that we lack.
I was afraid it would end just like my past.
Life would happen and it wouldn't last.