atlan

“winter’s gonna come; i’m gonna clean these veins again. so close to dying i finally can start living.”

that even if i try harder, harder, harder, and i am this new version of myself.

i. will. slip. up.

i will never be perfect. i will fall back on vices. i will be cruel. i will have days without an ounce of love in my vein and a hunger for isolation. i will be mean. oh, how i will be mean.

but i will still have my days where i love life. i will be able to be happy. and i may be mean but i am mean and happy. i am mean and loving. i am mean on an off day. i am mean when i am reminded of those in the past. i am mean towards those in my past. i am filled with so much anger some days it shakes me to my core.

like cool water waiting on my bedside table when i wake up parched, or poems chocked full of religious metaphors, or friends i hold so close to my heart i get worried i’ll squeeze them to death

and sometimes god plagues me with bad things

like when he inches the key to my closet a little closer, just close enough a skeleton can poke its wan finger through, and they are all out in the light, and i have to shoo them back comically with a broomstick

sometimes he fills my head so full of life i can barely take it, and all of a sudden i am drowning like i’m 17 again.

my disgust sits like a parrot perched, cawing and mimicking words over and over until i am forced to put a blanket over its cage

i hope he hates leos and phoebe bridgers and lucy dacus and marvel movies and dogs and the florida project and chai and evil eyes and crystals,

in the same exact way i now hate aries and nirvana and the beach boys and wes anderson movies and cats and fantastic mr fox and iced coffee and tarot and incense.

i hope all his memories of us he can’t look back on without a sick feeling in his stomach, like prom or the car seat headrest concert or going to cleveland or anything, really, anything from the two years of our friendship that blossomed into a goodbye without a word.

i am angry at myself, at him, at the outcome, at the alternatives.

i am angry at myself for letting myself be like this for so long, drowning in the validation of others, paddling to a shore i know will hold no relief.

i remain angry at him for not throwing me the preserver, for letting my lungs fill up with water for as long as they did, for standing and watching as long as he did. either help or go, he should’ve known this.

i am angry at the outcome. i live. i sit on the shore and cough up water and shake and shake and shake and then breathe in fresh air. i’ve been drowning for so long i forget how clean it feels against my throat. a relief to my senses.

i’m angry at the alternatives. i should’ve worn a life jacket. i should’ve protected myself, been smart. i should’ve drowned, the weight of the water moving itself into me until i rest on the seabed.

i am angry.

i dont have the heart to erase it.

i think of me, four months ago, so excited for the upcoming months, the summer, my friends.

i am no longer able to look at things the way i four months ago could.

i feel like erasing it erases the possibility of anything good.

i try my best to.

i lay out my clothes the night before, pick the right song on the walk to my bus stop so in the morning i feel like i’m in the opening of a movie.

i curate the feed of every fucking social media i own so some person i don’t even know can look at it and think i’m put together and alright.

i purchase copies of emerson’s work i don’t have the time to read but i do really like the idea of “self-reliance” so it sits pretty on my shelves along with my dad’s old stephen king novels i told him i would read but haven’t yet.

and i will meet my own cold gaze.

and i will know i cannot change what has been written. what has taken place.

i will glance away and away and away and nothing will change. i will always look back and stare at my own eyes.

and nothing will change this.

i can boil my blood with my own anger until nothing remains but hollow bones and carcass and nothing will change.

i can drown myself in my pity tears until my skin wrinkles with guilt and fish eat away my flesh and nothing will change.

more csh and mitski comparisons :))