Stop apologizing

For things you didn't do.

Stop holding the guilt

Of someone else's shame.

Stop doubting your intelligence.

Stop believing

That you are incapable.

The weight on your shoulders

Isn't weakness,

It's the burden of carrying

Everyone elses blame.

Be kind to yourself,

But also,

Do not let them crush you

Or break you down.

You are getting closer

To the finish line of this battle.

Don't crumble before you taste

Your well earned freedom.

Do not let them rob you

Of your first, real breath.

Fight on!

You deserve to live,

Once again I realised that words seldom measure distance, even though in the face of a stranger, distance is much less contagious.

I try nonetheless. From time to time I find myself trying to match my words with the distance between us. Often times I fail, and often times that realisation only comes when I stop the pen and test one against the other.

I read it, I read it again. I do the math that I’ve done a thousand times before. I do it again. Then I try to calibrate the measurement through coffee spoons (If he can do it- why can’t I?) Then I try to fix it through the sheer force I could muster up in one night. Then I look away from the paper, disgusted. Then I pace the room. Then I read it again, calibrate again, measure again. Then I sit back, exhausted, rubbing the weariness off my eyes but failing that too. Then I crumple up the paper and watch in desperate exasperation as the cold, sterile, elaborate but deathly wire bin eats my discarded effort.

I still can’t grasp the effortlessness you possess in matters like this.

I am a crusader without faith. A broken boyant lost in the sea. A torch under the sun. A leap as time stands still.

This city has failed you but I’m not done yet.

Days are endless. My companions at the darkest hour before dawn are perhaps equally perturbed as I am. I don’t know if they acknowledged my existance, I don’t know if they had the heart to. Thoughts have been surging through my mind like the pages of my scripts caught in the storm brewing in the distance. I can’t think about you when I’m like this. My mind is crowded, congested and diseased.

I’m heading north as early as daybreak, and I’ll be back when summer ends.