apricity in ink

it's been almost a year now. a year since i've changed, changed in ways i cannot quite revere. in ways that still make my heart drop when i listen to the songs i first heard over muffled shouting, in the back of a bus i'll never travel in again. in ways that make me wonder why people say that seasons bring growth. if they do, then why does winter make me long for the sky at 6pm and summer make me miss snowflakes i've never seen? or perhaps, it is only i who seem to be stuck in the soil. i watch every oak around me grow with the seasons, every laburnum bloom their sick yellow flowers. the sky at 6pm taunts me now. with its beautiful streaking persimmon orange and thick, humid air. it is something that can only be seen, dreamt of, thought of, but never witnessed. conversations i mangle over and over in my mouth like bones, knowing they too will be buried in this same soil i lay in. and part of me knows, no matter how perfect our last goodbye is, i will never again see that brilliance in your eyes that i came to learn as love. i will never again hear a song as music or words as anything but grazed souls. i will simply look at the sky at 6pm through my car window, wondering when the wind will start to blow.

the harbinger of fate will regret to inform me, it is rarely the people i mourn; far from the versions of them i fathom myself. and if it is so, have i truly ever loved anyone at all?

and is it the devil, or the heavens? that rob us of encounters, deprive us of grievances, and rid us of sin?

perennial flowers in my ailing stomach like dew drops on bitter mornings

infinitesimally smaller than life are these moments that currently consume my being i watch my verse only fall short to those generated and those who can piece away their embarrasment from pangs of grief don't read and reread unchanging leaves and i now tell the walls the makes of my dreams and trust in a bot to celebrate my feats.

and i think it's beautiful; the way we carry forward a piece of every person we ever meet i will hear in every laughter, my father's santa chuckle when he's watching his childish films and gets to work right after i will look for in every friend the patience of my dearest who knows not how much i appreciate her beneath words i've never penned i will feel in every page the rants and notes passed predictions from an oracle printed up in braille i will see in every smile the dimples i once loved and hug the bunny ears across from the sweatshirt aisle and with these pieces, i find; even when i am broken i will always feel complete.

and i wonder if one day she'll start writing about you too just another poet who made you her tragic muse i'll tell myself it's a coincidence that her writing's just like mine that we somehow just have mutuals and strangely similar lines i wonder if you see us as all the same figurine vastly different shadows with the same darkness beneath or maybe it's just you that always yearns to be a muse and when the verse stops selling you cut the spine loose.

and somehow sometimes the dullest streetlamps illuminate familiar roads far more than the brightest ones.

the oil spills glitter under scorching heat as potential withers under lacking conscientiousness herald the miracle that turns barely scalded hands into sinewy hardworkers.

and when i will be mature enough i will realize i need not seek comfort in any boy but my brother and need not cry to any man but my father i need not lay bare my heart for anyone but my mother nor discuss my woes with anyone but my best friend skepticism will precede every word i spill over for everyone who only saw my worth as a sponsor or a lover.