FoundAlongRoad

With a long enough lack of sleep
The world feels like a simulation
On the long nights I sit in dissociation
Devouring words to take me further into fantasy
Reflecting on today, on change
On years ago, on loss
The decision I cannot make
Because a part of me is always still teen-aged
It’s almost been a year since I was supposed to die
Pieces of me argue, to be comfortable or to touch the live wire
I still harbor delusions of myself
That I could be anything good for someone else
When she invites me into her home and I wonder what I look like in anyone else’s eyes
To ask an almost stranger, when I struggle to hold a conversation
And somewhere dangerous inside awakens again
That glinting illusion that whispers ‘maybe this time’
Maybe someone will see us, maybe we won’t have to hide
And I roll my eyes
There’s no such thing for my future as the pretty lies the pages tell me

I think of my best friends, in a past life
The few I never touch on even to write
The ways they shaped me and the holes that never heal
Like nostalgia lapping at my heels
Ghosts of everything I thought my life would be
I think of my last real ex, the last time I felt at home
And the comfortable chasm we’ve built,
Now that we live together alone
Never us again but never awkward
Precious arrangements that still make me feel more my own
It’s almost been a year since I touched death
A year of retreating into my own depth
Rebuilding what was scattered and scarred
Nurturing the spark
Of passion for being alive
In every mundane tick of time
And yet staying separated, from overwhelming, from intimacy
Taking time only to be with what is mine and with me
Curled up through the winter then slowly unfurling
Last summer I had been flinging parts of me out untethered,
Enjoying the feeling of feeling better, newly unabused and still breathing, reconnecting in reckless dense pieces
With that one ex that always takes the breath from me
We said best friend and there was no part of me that wanted to interrupt the life the love she had had to bleed to reach
But I could feel her in my heartbeat
That it wasnt right for us but that in another life maybe we could be..
And I pushed it away to get back to
Comfortable
Hibernating with my ex that was never mine except for drunken moments on countertops and in hallways between guys and she doesn’t remember what it was like to kiss me
And I don’t remember the taste only the adrenaline she gave me and made me feel alive before she metaphorically killed me
My favorite number of years and we were there dying slowly together but I wanted to dance in the light just sometimes
And she wanted him at her side
Her energy washed over me like the breeze by the calm sea
All salt and soothing and free
But inside her mind it was a thick canopy
Nature’s beautiful darkness with only sunlit streaks
And I could watch her touch every living thing like it brought life to them and me
But couldn’t cross the space to reach
To pull her back to see
She left but if I’m alive she lives in me
The crowded mosaic of all the love that’s broken and sutured me
Like the few friends of which I never speak
Maybe platonic loves were in with the deepest hurts in me
Cuz it’s the one thing I could never get right
that I couldn’t say wasn’t all me
Cuz I see how I sound the retreat
Pushing frantic energy toward others desperately
More concerned with that knifes edge of finding the match to me
The one for me
Seeking deeper cuts
And running from the taste of rejection in those closest to me
But that love whether romantic or not is unconditional in me
And bonds like that always felt like the most
They struck the need for flight in me
All the things I couldn’t be
So I think on today and if I’m even capable of being anything good to anyone
If we haven’t already run it into the ground
Potential was always my greatest drug
My worst defeats
But it’s been almost twelve months
Since it was a miracle to still breathe
And I’ve been trying to make peace with me
To balance this insanity, the drive, the need
To jump into doom and incapability with both feet
Just to feel alive
Instead I’ve found vitality in little moments every day
Pure joy in yet again coming awake
In experiencing every moment with little paws next to me
Pushing myself
Taking breaks
Taking breaths
Making mistakes
But is that what this would be?
Sometimes I don’t feel in control of my own compass
Who is running the program in the Windows of my life
So I take it where I can or I let it take me
Trying to be better than yesterday even when I wasn’t previously
Glass shards hiding along the path
Shining with memories and taunting dreams
Trying not to only feel alive when I bleed
Or on nights when the stars look so far yet the moon feels close to me
When nothing feels like reality and yet the air crackles with magic across my skin
Ragged emotions sanguineous and cold hard truths divine.