WriteBlr

The ghosts lingered in the walls of the house. It was abandoned. Moss crawled along the walls and settled, wearily, on the window sill. The fence was rusted, the grass grew tall and yellowed, hiding a few stray cats. The furniture had holes, dust coating the pale beige couch.

It was abandoned in the sense that it had been a little more than a decade since a human had lived there. But the ghosts honored the dying home as much as the rats.

He didn't like that look. Not in his own face when he looked into the broken mirror, and not on the hero's. Their eyes were empty. Their wrists raw from the old rope that had, just over the last week, have loosened. He had expected sarcastic remarks. Instead he was met with a blank look. A tight frown.

"Nothing to say?" He cooed. Lifting their chin with one gloved hand.

i write to you with bleeding fingers

that match my wounded heart,

i write to you with a shaky hand

as if i’m afraid you won’t hear 

everything i want to say

because i know

deep down you won’t,

so i write to you in my messy scrawl 

with my small errors that’ll bug me

as i drift into sleep,

so i write to you long winded messages

that burn with longing

that are red from the blood of my fingertips

knowing your eyes won’t grace the page

not really

not in the way that i want, 

i write to you knowing you won’t understand,

knowing you’ll see what you want from my messy words;

i was never good at speaking

and you were never good at understanding,

so we stand 

i jumped into a fire

and not a single mark marred your skin

i had willed the smoke from your lungs

liberated you from the 

crumbling structure of your childhood home,

i had smoothed back your now limp hair

had saved your good shoes

to put on your blistered swollen feet,

had kept a picture or two

tucked in my pale blue coat,

the few that weren’t half scorched,

i had given you a warm blanket 

free from bed bugs and dust bunnies,

placed you on a warm bed

away from fire

and near an open window, free

from bars,

and i sat at the edge of that bed

by those blistered swollen feet

your favorite story book in hand,

I want to be loved

In the way they show in stories

So strongly

So passionately

That it'll bury into our bones

And carry itself into the next life,

That when I'm into the ground

I'll be next to you,

And when I open my eyes

Our memories swept into

The stars,

I'll still see your face

Still feel your presence

Still crave your voice

Even though I would no longer

Memorize the sound,

And when I die

Again and again

And sink into the earth

I hope I'm buried next to you

In this lifetime

“Jealousy is born out of people who have nothing. Who have something to be jealous of.” I remember being told that--- by who, I no longer remember. I was always better at remembering the words than the people who said them.

I am a jealous person. A winter storm that wants the comfort of spring, or better yet, the warmth of summer. A weed that spreads vicariously who wants desperately to be a rose--- something commonly loved. This, is how I describe myself. A weed. Winter. Some type of herb that was once needed centuries ago but is now something hated, unwanted. 

I am jealous. I am jealous of people who have good big families, of people who are confident, who have everything figured out, whose anxiety doesn’t weigh them down, who are outgoing and smart and kind. I am a jealous, insecure person. I am jealous even though I don’t know someone’s life. How do I know they’re actual confident, or their families kind?

I don’t know. I never know--- you never know. 

There’s a deep melancholy about growing up. This out of body sensation of watching your friends, bullies, neighbors changing. They get married, have kids, get jobs in which they’re miserable in. Everyone I know seems miserable--- these are the greatest years of our lives. But for who? The coming of age protagonists in our novels? Our parents who, at that age, seem so much better at socializing? I ask my father a question. It should be simple: is anyone you know happy? He pauses for a moment, but I see it flash in his eyes. Uncertainty. Doubt. No, he replies. They’re tolerant. Stuck in miserable jobs. In loveless marriages.

And just like that my worst fear is becoming just like everyone I know. Miserable. 

 Anxiety curls into an unforgiving ball in the hollow of my stomach. I pray to a God I don’t even believe in. I pray that my adulthood isn’t paved in the blood of my sorrows. I pray that the best years of my life, as I’m so often told, aren’t filled with the foreboding anxiety of growing older. And I pray that my overwhelming loneliness doesn't stay with me.

Sometimes I wonder if I loved you or rather your kindness; but you weren’t really kind were you? You gave me your hand. You said I was pretty. You said my smile was nice, that I was kind. When you’re so devoid of warmth, of affection you praise the bare minimum, you long for kindness, even when said kindness is masked in dead fur. Does it matter as long as it keeps you warm? Did I love you, or did I love that you saw me? I was there. You said hi, you waved. It’s so easy to make me fall for you; just treat me like a human. Pretend that I matter. Give me dead things and tell me it’s a coat. Give me a meteor and tell me it’s the moon. Give me a lantern and say it’s the sun. Tell me, “I love you”.

I’ll believe you. I’ll swallow the lies like it’s taffy. I don’t know any different.