4/10/25
It’s Tuesday, and he’s talking about the grocery list.
I’m tuned out, I get the gist.
He texts while I’m out, “I love you. I miss you. How’s your day?”
I just reply, "me too." I know there’s more I should say.
It’s all so mundane. I feel insane.
It’s not even his fault. I’m to blame.
I love a mystery, until I learn their name.
Another night, surface-level words, all the same.
The TV’s on. I’m elsewhere. I write. I escape.
The melancholic poet with embers, but fires she craves.
Comfortably numb, like a restless sedative
But with lithium comes poetry.
As my thoughts spiral, like ink on a page,
It’s getting harder to ignore this restless rage.
The worst part? He’s done nothing wrong.
He tries to dance, I pretend to love this song.
It’s like he’s drawn me a bath. Music, bubbles, rose petals torn.
But when I sink in, the water’s lukewarm.
I slip underneath with a smile and "thank you."
Accept that there’s comfort at the bottom of a swimming pool.
Even as we dance in the kitchen to Sinatra,
Wine in hand, water boiling for pasta
It should feel like a dream.
So why do I feel like I’m bottling a scream?
He twirls me. I let out a practiced laugh.
My eyes widen like I hear a laugh track.
Over his shoulder, I break the fourth wall
Staring at nothing, down the dark hall.
He’s aloof, and the audience knows.
I’m dissociating in my own reality show.
I used to look at him like he hung the moon.
Now I just see the wallpaper he pasted in the living room.
I drift through our house without much thought for my taste,
Because each nail in the wall,
Each brush of paint,
A nail in the coffin,
A sealing of fate.
He’s planting roots,
I’m planning escape routes.
I’ve already left in every way but the last.
And he doesn’t notice. If he did, he wouldn’t ask.
This love is comfort food,
Emotional fast food.
But it’s also the slow, dull ache of never being truly fed.
It isn’t crafted with care, or intent, or depth.
It’s not what I wanted. Not what I crave.
And I must accept,
I won't want tomorrow what I don't want today.
So do I settle into the lukewarm, go numb, slip beneath?
Or burn out alone, searching endlessly?
Which path is better for me?
I live in my damn head
writing, overthinking, a paper and pen.
A life of art or action? Could I have both?
A muse and a writer, or forever unknown?
But I dream of you.
Writing you into everything.
You’re the song I scream in my car,
Raw and real.
You’d find the ghosts of me I tried to silence,
And sit with them like they belonged.
You'd read the subtext of every sigh,
Know when I'm spiraling and never look away.
I learned what you are,
By bleeding for it in the lukewarm years.
I have been bored for a very, very long time.
And you,
You are the darkness between the stars,
The quiet infinity of 2 a.m.,
The pull that turns my silence into poetry.
