Late Night Experience

Where we are a tragedy

Worthy of my ire.

You have betrayed me in a way that people feel

And feel sorry for.

You have justified the venom

That drags its way through my veins,

Long fingers stretched out and digging into me

For better grip as they claw toward the surface.

Everything seems to be aiming at my throat,

Targeting some violent expulsion.

I'm almost always nauseous, now.

Something heavy sitting in my stomach.

Something burning in my throat.

I'm living a separate life,

Where you are a villain to be slain,

Not just a man.

I am the heroine,

Not just a girl desperate to be loved by someone.

Not just a girl who wants more than anything to be something -

Enough that she'd plot the very story in her head.

Everything everything everything in me

Is devoted to trying to hate you.

You don't think about me at all.

Before I think better of it.

Before I think that I can make the choice to be kind.

That I shouldn't willingly step deeper back into the swamp,

Into the quicksand I was warned of as a child.

(Should I have felt, then, that the TV was speaking to me?

That the cosmos were etching out a personal warning?)

Before I think that I shouldn't spoil what I have left.

That you can't change the past,

So what does it matter?

But they linger, they do,

In the back of my mind.

The questions that feel gossamer thin

But must be made of glass or razors or

Maybe they're something innocuous and insidious

Like a grass seed that burrows into your cells and spreads infection.

I know you knew.

Do you know that?

Did you know?

Tell me, please. Honestly. It has to be "yes."

Even if it's "no."

Somehow, I think "no" would hurt more.

There needs to be more than one villain.

I can't be the only one complicit in my-

In the things that happened to me.

You have to have known so I can blame you,

Even if just a little bit.

Or maybe it's so I can tell myself

Again again again

That you knew because there was nothing to know.

Nothing happened,

At least nothing serious.

Nothing that mattered.

Nothing important enough for you to stop it.

Or maybe I wasn't important enough to stop it.

And it's poetic, if you knew.

Made all the better by the truer recreation of history.

This is our bloodline; our lineage.

Your grandmother knew about your mom.

You knew about me.

A pattern woven into our tapestry.

It's art, really. Fate tying the threads well.

Why wasn't I enough to leave for?

That's a good one.

Because you did leave,

When it was for you.

When I told you to put yourself first.

I didn't ask about myself.

But I had learned, then, that the rot was deeper.

The swamp more expansive,

The quicksand deeper.

Everything more and more and more.

What I am most thankful for, maybe -

After the selective memory loss -

Is that I knew then to pick you.

I knew that I was no longer willing to pay the price

Of what was called love.

Maybe I couldn't pay, anymore.

Maybe my coffers had run dry.

Maybe maybe maybe.

Everything is a hand-wave.

An uncertainty.

Did you know?

Did you know?

How much?

Tell me, what did you see?

What do you see now?

Do you see him wrapped around me?

His fingers live in my chest, at least.

Tightening around my heart - they must.

They're crawling up around my bones.

Do you see them?

Do you see him in the emptiness behind my eyes?

Are we the same?

Is that why I wasn't worth leaving for?

Do you love me?

Can you?

Can anyone?

Can anyone love me the right way?

I don't think I believe that love exists.

I trust the chemical reaction.

There's something out there.

Something distant.

Maybe it never lived in me.

Maybe it burnt up with the memories I spirited away.

Maybe they were spirited away for me.

Do you know?

Did you know?

Will I ever ask you?

Heavy, wet, creeping along.

I can slough you off but

The conditions are just right

So you always come back.

And that makes sense, doesn't it?

I am borne of the field you have sown

And cultivated.

The conditions in me are as you have made them.

Yours to poison,

Yours to consume.

There's a bruise over it now, pulsing with my heart.

Let it be a sign that I've given enough.

Let it be a sign that you're watching,

That you won't make me lose another one.

I loved you, I loved you, I loved you.

It wasn't enough.

I gave everything I had then,

But you're still gone.

Did I need to have more to lose?

Did fate know it had to choose?

You were everything. I couldn't have given you,

But I was forced to.

You could never be cruel -

If you live in this broken skin

Please tell me the truth.

I know where your story ended

Am I going that way again?

I know there's no comfort in knowing,

You just need to push through.

But I lost all my strength when I lost you.

Then I thought I was done for with two.

I'm left here, somehow, pressing a bruise.

I bite my knuckles bloody because you notice them less than my lips.

Even when you turn my face away

You don't like the scraping against your fingers.

Anxious in front of your door,

I want to fidget or bounce

Like they do in the movies but

Out here I've learned it's better in these moments

To be still.

I come when called,

I move on command,

Your fingers work my jaw

From where they're stuffed between my lips.

I will love you how you let me.

Even while it was happening,

Now it sits like a sheath over my mind.

A constant, subtle pressure

Surrounding me.

Weighing me down.

Is this growing up -

All of your demons come to haunt?

Everything you did,

Or everything you let happen to you,

Come to collect?

Maybe this is the slow death knell.

My life flashing slowly before my eyes

As I trudge toward death.

30 under 30, gone too soon.

Let me at least be remembered for that

And bury my ghosts with me.

Packing up and moving to California.

Where there isn't enough rain to cut down through my skin but

The sun can bleach my exposed bones.

It's very 80s, very 2000s.

With big enough sunglasses and enough filters

The light seems warm and welcoming,

Not glaring.

And if I stay away from showbiz,

Because I'm not that big of a dreamer,

It certainly can't be harsh.

This is the premise of America:

Go West, young man.

Take from the land that hasn't broken your back yet.

With enough miles reflected on the dash,

Your problems can't catch up.

Everything old is new again

With a bit of distance and a splash of paint.

There I am, in the bay windows.

Staring at the paths the raindrops make on the panes.

Cigarette absentmindedly burning my fingertips.

It isn't the cold devastation of isolation.

It's a style choice.

I dig crescents into my fingers with the opposite nails.

I'm just making patterns.

It isn't unhealthy,

It's orderly.

Everything by design.

I lie, I lie, I lie.

I'm choking on it so I can't on tears on

The weights trying to claw their way down into my chest

To join those that are crushing me.

It's Romantic to suffer, I'm sure it is.

Of feeling so helpless,

So hopeless.

I'm tired of being tired.

And I know -

I feel it sitting heavy in my gut but

Trying to crawl up into my chest,

Through my throat -

That I am doing this to myself.

I could leave.

It would be so simple -

A few sentences,

A trip downtown,

A box of a few belongings.

The effort would come after -

Finding, building a new life,

A new foundation.

There might be hard times, yes,

But have I not known harder?

Have I grown so weak,

So cowardly?

I fear the answer is yes.

And I will keep being tired until

I lie down for the long sleep.

So here I am pretending someone dumped me

Like I haven't been afraid to date my whole life.

Here I am saying I wish our last encounter

Had been something more romantic like

Me making love to you gently with a chainsaw.

That's what people would feel in this situation, right?

Am I right? Am I right?

Please don't tell me that I'm wrong.

That isn't how the bit goes

And I've been hearing it way too long.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be

Easier to stop pretending the way

I pretend to have stopped pretending.

But that's only relatable to like, half a percent of the population

And I don't think that's what she was getting at

So here we go again: I'm getting dumped.

I want to sink them into the meat of the muscle

And feel it flutter and pulse beneath my lips,

Around my fangs.

Mouth full of warm

You.

I want to trace a path down your arm with my fingertips.

I imagine you smooth and still like marble,

Something removed and solid and safe.

Everyone knows, they must

See the way my eyes follow how your pectorals stretch your shirt.

The way the fabric pulls, collapses, bunches.

I watch the way your neck stretches and tenses

Into the tightest, thickest line.

I want to bite there, too.

Our secret, unspoken.

We can pretend this is us and these moments are ours

If we just never say it out loud.

If we just burn with quiet want.

The voicemail box says it's empty and

Customer service says they can't recover the message and

I'm forever trapped in what I thought I was ready for,

What I thought I wanted:

Forever knowing but not really knowing.

I am doomed I am

Limbo

I am

Perpetual suffering and uncertainty.

I must have earned this.

I must deserve this.

I must be wrong.

I must, I must, I must.

No matter what, or how much,

I insist,

There exists

Beyond my reach an answer or

A suggestion at the same.

I did not grab it when I could, so I am back to

The truth that eats away at my veins:

I deserve this.

This kind of filthiness that serves

As shock value for television programs.

That salacious dirt that backstops

Internet news and makes everyone

Stop and send some form of sad online reaction.

If there's cosmic design, maybe this is it

If there isn't, maybe this is it anyway.

We can't all be lucky.

We can't all be normal or

Lucky or

Heroes.

All of those require an outlier

Languishing in the mud,

The filth,

The despair.

Why not me?

Other than myself.

So much of me, of my life,

I have not been in control of.

Everything you've never had you want so desperately.

Who am I to be anything new,

Anything different?

I won't let anyone make me a victim.

But as the cracks start to form, now.

So many years later -

So many years after I should've gotten over this -

I wonder if I've become a victim of myself.

There are two truths:

You are nothing more than a rendering of a fragment of a hundred memories.

You are so much more than I ever knew.

If I were ever honest -

And you, I think, despite it all, knew me -

What I miss is a Lifetime movie.

A fantasy of you and me in love.

Of me lovable.

Of me being someone to think of, come back for.

If I were ever honest,

It's not about you.

It's always about me.

And isn't that part of the problem?

Even my fantasies are wrapped up in my flaws.

I want to miss you

And I tell myself I do.

But I've lived in so many layers of pretending

And lying to myself

That I don't know if it's true.

"Is there all there is?"

I don't know who I'm asking.

I'm no ally to myself in this.

Everything changes and nothing changes

As I sit and watch the world go by

With my same tired eyes and bent back.

Am I incapable or unwilling?

Which leaves me with less blame?

I shoulder so much weight, I'm weary,

But if I take this too, am I not the martyr?

Moral victories in a war with myself,

In a war with the question of

"Is life hopeless?"

My world is a kiddie pool of waist-deep mud.

I want to lie down.

I want to get out.

My feet are numb,

But I keep wading in circles.

"It'll get better?"

Counting off the years -

The next is always mine but,

The calendar is growing thin.

Spine weary, bent, breaking.

Like mine.

The sleeplessness is a slow agony

Settling over my skin.

Fragile bones grind away to brittle.

I wonder where I'll find my straw.

At this point, I need only a feather

To chase me down.

One escaped from the wings

As I melt away under the sun.

It must be me, grasping for too much.

Greedy, greedy little girl

I never learned

Balance.

I must not have,

If I give everything and get nothing in return

But wanting

And it is still asking too much.

I'll quiet down.

I'll bow my head.

I'll tell myself "it'll get better"

And if I smile enough,

If I try hard enough,

Next year will be my year.