killjoy

take what you need.

bite down into my flesh

and rip me from my very being.

chew me into vulgar pieces,

swallow me down in haste,

only to take another bite

immediately after.

and in your craze,

in your hunger for more of me,

i hope you choke.

-kj (im back?)

Cold and icy, with a heart that no longer beats for me.

The arms that once held me so tightly have grown limp with decay and reeks with the stench of promises left unkept. What used to caress my skin now breaks through, the filth underneath your serrated nails seep into the wounds they’ve created. The light in your eyes dimmed, and you walk with eyes glazed over-

An empty husk in resemblance to one I used to love.

You were kind to me once.

Now your lips are blue. And you’re much nicer to me in my head.

Leave me in the dust like you intended.

Leave me to rot and plant my roots into the earth, where my shoes will never lift from the ground and my eyes forever turned towards the sky.

The silhouette of your back is shrinking, every step you take is another farther from me. I watch as you slip away, as if I would never notice the divot in the bed you made or hear the lock click as you close the door. I watch as you turn your heel and walk in a direction that leads to the place where you’re meant to be, where I’ll never reach.

…And as much as the heart inside me screams for you to turn around,

Look at me, please look at me!

I pray for you like Eurydices prayed for Orpheus- please don’t look back for me.

Go on. Be free.

We were never meant to be.

I would do anything.

Or at least try to. No matter what reality brought to light, I would have tried to do the unlikely. The unreasonable. The impossible.

I would have held my breath to hear you laugh again.

I would have fought off a blink so much as to make sure I wouldn’t miss a single second of you out of my sight. I would have pinched the hands of the clock in place all to keep you here with me, just a little longer.

I would have if you let me. But you were reasonable. Practical. Realistic.

So I won’t do the unlikely. The unreasonable, or the impossible.

I’ll keep breathing through the memories that continue to haunt me despite how much I fight them off.

I’ll shut my eyes in an attempt to redirect my attention from thoughts of you. I’ll let the sands of time brush the canvas I have of you in my mind, every grain distorting the frame till I no longer remember your every detail.

Because for you, anything.

For you, always.

4:00 AM

Always thinking.

So many thoughts at once like a busy convention that’s been filled beyond capacity. Whispers and whispers, but none of them comprehensible enough to be understood. Each fleeting and slipping through my grasp, prancing away too fast for recognition but just long enough to leave a scar, a feeling. My head is spinning like a disc on a turntable, but the player is too fast for the song. Almost like a microwave but the substance was in the heat for too long and melted into a disgusting soggy mesh. It feels like my eyeballs are pulling away from my skull. They feel disconnected to the point where they loll back and forth wherever gravity beckons them to. A certain pressure point screams in anguish and threatens me with pulsing stabs at my temples. No amount of stability that my hands or neck could offer would be able to support the amount of antagonizing disorientation that I am experiencing.

I feel tired. I feel exhausted as my eyelids beg for sleep and rest, and yet for some reason my brain won’t allow it. For some reason I lay awake, waiting for something that I don’t even know of. What am I waiting for? Should I count sheep and wait for the 100th one? Should I sing myself nursery rhymes and wait til I’ve sung the last tune I can remember?

When I’ve done so, will I be at peace?

but sorry, that’s not what I meant.

Sure, I’d catch a grenade for you or take a bullet for you, but would I ever really get the chance to do that?

What I mean to say is I would plan to go to the gym with you, stay up till the sun rises talking about every thought that we come across, then decide maybe we can go another day. I would stay as still as I can for a couple minutes before getting up from bed to let you sleep longer, because I know how long it takes for you to fall asleep. I would read every text as to what made you excited or what ticked you off throughout your day. I would put on my shoes as fast as I could to get your groceries with you or go to the bank. I would stop walking and wait for you as you stoop to tie your shoes. I would watch your favorite show and read your favorite book, so I could understand your references and why you’d want that tattoo. I would wake up the moment I hear you stir in the middle of the night and stay with you till you fall asleep. I would send you posts on social media that I think would make you laugh or tempt you to spend money on. I would let you fall apart, if you’d let me piece you back together. I would give you the bigger half of my favorite snack, a chocolate chip cookie to be exact. I would play your favorite songs just to see your face light up and wonder if I did it on purpose. I would fold your laundry with you, and wash the dishes after you cook.

I can’t burn the world down twice, nor can I catch a grenade more than once. God knows how many bullets my body could take.

But for you,

Every day I would do the ordinary, the plain, and the mundane. Always.

(the greatest gift I could give to you is my time, which I am so limited of, but would offer to you again and again and again.)

If the world was ending today, would you find me in our final moments?

If today was your last, would you tell me goodbye?

If circumstances had let you, would you still be with me?

If things had been different, would you stay?

I’ve grown so tired of the idea,

That the only type of love

Is a love that’s like a rose:

A single bud,

And a dozen thorns

Wrapped around my neck.

Red. A bleeding, bold red.

A striking wreckage of petals and thorns fill the bathroom sink as I retch the words I left unsaid.

It’s worse than I thought. It’s progressing too fast, this disease that has planted its seed in my lungs. For far too long, I pushed away my suspicions, the anxiety that I may have contracted this deadly malady and that it has taken me as its next victim. I ignored the signs, I hid the symptoms, I rejected the idea that I could ever be afflicted with an ailment such as this.

But denial isn’t enough to make me immune. 

The moment I met you, the seed found its home in the lobes of my lungs, a pathogen laying dormant and waiting for its trigger. At the sound of your laughter, it germinated, spreading its roots into my bronchi. In every detail that I unearthed about you, it followed the lines of my capillaries. With every sweet word, my immune system weakened. I stood no chance.

It crept through my veins and infected the vessels of my heart, with its stem wrapping around the pumping muscles like a snake around its prey. 

And even when you began to pull away, this affliction only built up to take more space in my throat. Every empty promise filled my airways with only the scent of roses. With every display of proof that you and I will never be anything more, breathing became difficult as petals choked me from the inside. The look in your eye as you said goodbye led to shards of pain from thorns tearing through tissue.

As you left, I felt a shredding scratch as the vines crept up my trachea. The aroma of what was meant to be beautiful overwhelmed my senses and I finally realized that I reached the final stage of my illness’ progression. There is no convalescence for me. No medicine nor surgery can save me from a disease this far gone. There is no cure for falling in love with you.

Red. A bleeding, bold red.

A striking wreckage of what has been and what could have been filled the bathroom sink one last time.

I am love. 

I am love in its entirety.

I am anger when love is hurt, and I am tenderness when love is needed.

I am desire when love wants what it doesn’t have, and I am yearning when love has lost what it once had.

I am euphoria when love is in the air, I am pain when love is in despair.

I am open arms and boundaries; safe space and turmoil.

I am jealousy and devotion;  trust and a leap of faith.

I am mutual and unrequited.

I am heartache and heartbreak.

I am love personified.

All the memories we shared flood in all at once at the sight of you. 

I’ll give you a smile, a small one unlike the big toothy grin I used to greet you with. A smile worth a past life, a dozen restless nights, and a thousand words I’ll never get to express. 

We were friends once. We loved each other once. 

I hope you’re doing well. 

I’m glad I got to meet you, and I hope our paths cross again so I can ask, “How are you?”

So you can reply, “Good,” with a smile of your own. 

And we leave it at that.