friend,
wake up, open your eyes again, breathe
but what’s left, are you hollow?
i miss you
are you alive? are you waiting?
do you care? do you have words enough to care?

i feel like i can hear your heartbeat, like a whisper, or a hum
like something i can’t quite tell is even there and something i’m not certain enough to say isn’t

did you die? did i… suffocate isn’t the word. deprived? malnourished?

i thought i didn’t need you. i thought i had shed you, i became raw.
i could feel the breeze, i could taste the air, i could ingest the light. i could believe.
was i a lie? did i become an illusion? a cloud? was i almost there?

i felt as though i had placed a palm on the outer space leading into what i had always fantasized
but was it just as if i placed my cheek to the glass and glimpsed the warmth of its reality into my skin?
as though i had walked to the threshold and strained against the air in such that i might have crossed it?
but i wore it, as a skin more like…i pressed through maybe, and it wrapped around me, but was i ever on the other side?
i wore it, as if it were who i always was, and then while i was silent, it would shed…

am i?

i thought i didn’t need you. i thought you had peeled away, but i was wrong.
i am

are you alive? will you accept me home? can i really hold you if you’re already dead?

–I was never gone. It’s just that everything became blurred. You had a role and so did I, and at some point the lines of that blended and what was before, two voices, were then just one. And now we separate, because it’s necessary again. Friend.

When the dice fall, I hear the bones rattle.
When the hymns are sung, I hear the moans echo.
When the sun rises, all is cracked, grey, and flaking.

All is screams, bickering, and delusion. All the pockets of niceties and love and dream are like beads of glass in the pressure of a tight, coiling dark. Precious. Delicate.
And every time one of them cracks and the poison seeps in, I lose a little more faith.
When the eyes are beaming and glossy, it seems to me a beacon to the wolves.

And in turn when I see the feral mind tucked just within, coursing through limbs, through gaze, through words, I begin to sink.

What is a good man? What is a good person? What is not touched and stained, scrubbed and hidden?

How do I enjoy life without saying fuck it all? Live and let live, sink or swim. Above or below.

What goodness seems meant for some rests in my gut as an impossibility. Everything I’ve done to be a good person, a good man, has since the start felt a masquerade. My deeds are good, the smiles are welcoming, but the sun is grey. The clothes are modest, the skin is smooth, but the veins are black. It’s unfair, to let someone believe I am a good person, to feel warm next to me, when I have made them just part of my own illusion.

The night comes, the smoke twirls, the throat burns, and I am alive. All is meal in one fashion or another. And I hate it.
The blood rushes, the sheets draw, the air stands, and I am alive. All is contempt for what I cannot touch though I press with my fingertips. And I hate that I love it.

I enter into a bright other world, and I feel as imposter. I try, I try, I try. And then I see the cracks, glass beads I thought were safe and secure from my own world. I see that the poison I try to run away from, has in most cases, already beat me there. I see that there are few good people. I trust in the darkness that is me and others.

When the curtains are shut, that’s when you come find me. You saunter your hips behind closed eyes, because my company is scandalous. I will be your martyr, because you have to stay a good person… because I am not.

–Thinking of all the sweet memories that have stumbled into my life, they are undeniable scars of softness – small but intense memories that remind me that warmth does in fact exist. And I don’t know…maybe it’s enough.

why are you still awake?
is it self pity again?
idealism?
are you wondering why the world singled you out?
or why, for supposed vastness that is out there, you feel trivialized and unheard?

friend,

drowning in your own self pity,
idealism is just a fucking excuse.
you’re not singled out, because the world doesn’t even think about you.
tell yourself that you’re trivialized and unheard, because you yearn to be the center of the narrative.
the victim of the silence.

i know this, because i can’t sleep either. heh…

shake off the ‘would be’s, ‘could be’s, ‘should be’s, and take a look around.
in my experience, life is chaos. you don’t matter. when you die, there will be nothing left.
every choice you make, every choice you don’t, every thought you take in or put out,
it’s all of that which tallies up into what you feel now.

forget about it, forget about what should matter
what should be, what could have been. it’s over.
the only thing that should matter to you right now, is you.
the only thing you can control, is you.

reward is not something to bargain for. it’s something you fight for and take.
even it that means one piece at a time.
you don’t deserve anything. don’t rest your hopes on ‘deserve’.
you don’t fucking deserve anything.

ideals. expectations. fantasies.
suffocating yourself with that shit.

get out there, and fill your space for fuck’s sake.
if you don’t, somebody else will,
you can screech and crow about what you deserve,
what would be, could be, should be…
all while wailing against the fact that nobody gives a fuck.

take compassion when it comes your way,
recognize opportunities when they present themselves,
and fucking play the hand you’re dealt with.

is it a shitty hand? probably.
but are you going to work with what you’ve got?
say fuck it to everything and everyone else and have a little fun with your inadequacies?
or are you going to fold out on life?

i don’t like that you’re in pain.
in fact, i fucking hate it.
it makes me feel really fucking hurt and angry.
i don’t want you to feel like that, because i don’t like to feel like that.

but,
will someone like me leave you behind? you can fucking count on it.
but only if you aren’t fucking moving, stagnant.
if i think you’re worth it, i will walk with you
even if it’s just a step or a breath a day,
i will listen to every word you god damn well say,
every fucked up thing because it can be fascinating to hear you speak out your darkness,
BUT only if you’re fucking moving.
a step or a breath a day.

i will be in your corner for as long as you keep fighting.
even if that means you fall flat on your face repeatedly,
as many times as you get back up,
i will be there.

but…
i won’t listen to you ask me to watch you die.

friend.

i know things aren’t the way you want them to be,
but if you keep adding to that list,
they’re never going to be.

lets have some fun with this mess.

–Note to self. Life is just a series of moments. Fuck it all, if there’s something fun to come from my own bullshit, then I will have it. For some, the little things are everything. Fuck you too.