poetry *hypothetically*

I don’t know how to say I love you with pretty connotations.

Maybe a year or two ago I could have written you a letter embellished with metaphors and big words and sentences that flowed like a chocolate river. Sweet and rich and beautiful. Maybe a year or two ago I could have stood still and spilled loud words of honesty and kindness and beauty. Now when I look at you, when you say these things to me, I can’t help but silence myself. The poetry in my brain cuts short and all I can muster is… whatever this is. A confession, perhaps, to some sad thing we’ve both chosen to ignore. To bury.

I think you needed me. But I don’t think you wanted me. I get it, I’ve used people with only the best of intentions as well. You needed support, you needed a form of escape, and I was… kind. Not many have shown kindness to you. I don’t blame you and I won’t ask anything of you. But this silence is suffocating.

All I want is to speak with you. I’ll keep doing what I do in a desperate plea for your attention. In a hope that the quizzes I send you provide an answer that realizes some sense of an idea in your mind (the idea of me—of us). In a hope that if I continue messaging words of love and pride, that maybe you will elicit something similar, and that you might think of me. In a hope that I will not have to stray to come and find you and that instead, you might come to me.

I know that it’s unlikely. I know that you need to heal. I know that I was only an idea to you—the light at the end of the tunnel—and I know now that he’s gone, now that you’re free, my light has burned out like some twisted metaphor of gods and myths and Icarus. The tunnel leads to a dead end and I am nothing but a dark, twisted journey and you are too tired to trek. The destination is certainly not worth the travel and I am certainly not worth your time.

my mouth is sewn shut and you’re looking at me like i’m something out of a horror movie.

i can’t talk today.

i don’t have an explanation for you. the world is overwhelming. the demand for my words is overwhelming.

i can’t talk today.

so i stitch my mouth shut and i mumble an apology even though it aches to spit out

but you’re still looking at me like that.

like i’m searching for attention with my silence

like my lack of words is a bother to you

like my absence from the world is a burden on your shoulders.

i’m sorry.

i know it’s weird, i know it comes off mean, i know it’s not socially acceptable.

i just...

Magic. 

Smoke in the air Wind beneath your feet. Glittering stars. The moment right before you fall asleep.

Magic.

Frayed cloth Long walks into twilight. Streetlights blurred through raindrops. Summer sun and the smell of chlorine.

Magic.

Chocolate eyes. How deep is the ocean? Do you take sugar with your coffee? How are you?

Magic.

Music in the distance. Firelight. September rain. You.

All of my words are a tangled mess of fast-paced sentences,

each phrase getting louder and louder.

There is no more eloquence in me.

My vocabulary has shrivelled to accusations, and anger, and pain.

I can’t be gentle anymore.

Every letter I type is an anger-fuelled shout

or a hopeless metaphor.

I never used to write from experience,

my words were an escape,

somewhere to go when I needed to run away from the world.

Now my head is filled with too many thoughts,

each one pounding to get out,

yelling and screaming

and I’m too focused on trying to get them on paper that I don’t focus on how they’re coming out.

I can’t be gentle anymore.

There is no rhythm to my poetry.

It’s all sharp words and short sentences.

I don’t know how to break my paragraphs and so my thoughts are

cut off in the middle

for no reason

except

that’s how I think it sounds best.

Because, if my lines are short or

cut off in the middle,

then I can call it poetry

and not my own form of therapy.

I write when I can’t talk and I talk when I can’t write and all of my secrets are spilled in a scramble of ink and words,

paper and songs,

whispers and shouts.

I can’t be gentle anymore

I don’t know how.

I don’t know how or if I ever wrote of lace on skin or eyes held in a trance.

I can’t do it anymore.

This is all there is.

My thoughts are tangled like headphones

and the only way I can seem to untangle them

is to cut the wire.

But...

then they’re broken.

Maybe that makes sense.

Maybe I’m broken.

Maybe that’s why