Another birthday

Another day spent celebrating my existence alone.

Sometimes, it seems too hard to keep going.

To just accept that I'm alone again, that there is nobody out there I can trust, nobody to take care of me when I feel lost and alone. just more people to use me as they will for whatever needs they have..

while mine go unmet. again.

is it so hard to just BE HERE?

You don't know me..

When I talk about my life online sometimes, or with therapists or whatever, I find I run into the same problem a lot.

 I get generic advice, when I'm a very specific person. When you talk about dating, having emotional and physical needs, people tell you to "be happy with yourself, love yourself, respect yourself" etc.

It completely ignores the social aspects of humanity - we need other people. We need them in order to be able to function properly, literally in order to survive. There's a reason that babies who aren't hugged or held enough often get sick and die - failure to thrive.. We are literally hardwired to need other human contact. When you tell someone to be single, to work on themselves, to be happy alone, you're telling them that those needs don't deserve to be met, that those needs aren't important. That you don't need someone to hold, or someone to have sex with that isn't just a casual partner or one night stand. That you don't need someone who cares how your day was, whether it was good or bad. That trust and intimacy is something you should somehow be able to fulfill by yourself...


Not to mention there are a whole bunch of things that being single denies you - our society is dependent on the social structure of partnership. It's literally cheaper to be in a couple, everything is. If I want to go on vacation, I have to book a hotel room for one person, on one income (for which I'm taxed at a higher rate than if I was married).. if I rent a place, again, I have one income per bedroom, unless I want to do the really awful thing of sharing a room with a non-intimate partner. When I buy food, it's often portioned for families or couples. If I'm out of work, I don't have someone else to help me get by, I just have me. If I had a child, childcare would be my sole responsibility.

All these things get ignored by people who tell you to be happy alone before you're happy in a relationship. They give you canned advice, which really is a judgment saying "if you're not completely happy alone, you don't deserve to be happy in a relationship.. because your needs aren't actually important, what you need you should magically find by yourself.. "

I've been single for a decade. In that time, I've gone from having no career to being moderately successful in one, with a degree and a job in my field. I've been to therapy. I've worked hard to know myself better, to understand my personal needs better, to figure out what exactly I'm looking for. I've been on so many dates. I've met so many people, done so many things.

At what point do I become worthy of the social construct almost everyone else seems to have? At what point am I someone who deserves a partner in my life? Never? I'm almost 40, and my longest relationship STILL was the awful marriage I had at 21.

Blah blah, respect yourself, love yourself.. yeah... when do I get to have what everyone else does?

Open relationships

I haven't been seeking open relationships out. Have actively been avoiding them, to be honest. But suddenly I seem to be in at least one, if not two, poly relationships.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. Both of the people are very cool, very respectful of me, and sweet to me.

And I know that I have no sexual jealousy.. but I know that I'm nobody's first priority. Nobody's primary.. I still sleep alone most nights. I still don't have someone that I can talk to all the time. It's weird, because I feel quite emotionally attached.. but the reciprocation isn't necessarily there.

another one bites the dust

bye G.

you seemed like a nice guy. sorry you had your own shit to deal with that meant I couldn't stick around.

I just feel so unimportant. You kept emphasizing how little time we had spent together, as if a count of days or hours means anything. I bared my soul to you, because you asked it of me, because you said that was what you wanted.. so now that I did, I feel empty. rejected. There's nothing left of me.

Another year

Another perfect crime

in the pantomime that is my life. But the show must go on, right? So now I have a decent job, an ok place to live

but I'm still alone.

Date me, don't date me. Love me, don't love me. What do I care? And the answer is. I don't.

i can't care anymore
this is it
the last try.


I've said that before, I know. but this time it feels real. Feels like I should just never hope again. I'm 37. Old. Dried up. Who wants what I am?

Nobody.
I give up.

Can't try. Anymore.

Fuck

I'm crying about you again.

Ok.

I'm crying and it sucks, because I've been doing ok. I've been coping better with life, lately.

But hearing that you fucked around with my friend, that hurts.

I mean, seriously. You could fuck around with what, 5 billion people, approx? And you chose the only one I introduced you to? My only friend that you knew?

How is that not personal?

Everyone wants me to react like a grownup.

Yeah. I can do that.

But here, alone, I'm crying again.

I don't even know why you can still hurt me. Why should I care? I guess I care because it feels like you're doing it on purpose to hurt me.

I don't usually get upset much.. most of the time I can understand people's actions, and if I can understand it, mostly it doesn't hurt.

But the only framework I have with which to process that, is that you're both trying to hurt me. Or at least, both deciding that hurting me wasn't as important as getting off.

Or that maybe I'm just this robot person, without feelings.

I wish I was.

I wish that this didn't hurt me. Again. I wish I could remove your power to hurt me. I thought I had.

I'd cut you out of my life as much as I could.

Everything that kills me.. just kills me.

Today

Today you threatened me

there are times in BOTH of our lives where we sometimes have to put things either on hold or pause for someone else. if that person is going through an ABSOLUTLE FUCKING NIGHTMARE, then we pause and wait and just be avaialble.

. i will say this once and if you EVER mention taking your life, JUST AFTER MY FATHER LOSING HIS, i will call 911 and NEVER speak to you again

I CAN NOT TELL YOU HOW FUCKING OFFENSIVE AND HORRIBLE IT IS TO LISTEN TO YOU TALK ABOUT TAKING YOUR OWN LIFE.

YOU DONT EVEN SEE IT

YOU WANT FUCKED UP

HOW ABOUT SAYING THAT TO SOMEONE WHO JUST LOST A PARENT

THINK ABOUT IT

THEN TELL ME WHO IS MAKING THINGS ABOUT WHO

IM DONE LISTENING TO YOU TALK ABOUT KILLING YOURSELF

IM DONE

How offensive it is for me to say this? How offensive do you think it is for me to FEEL this and have you tear me apart for it.

I'm sorry I'm not Pausing and Waiting and just being available to you.

I JUST WANT TO DIE.
I don't want to feel so alone anymore. I don't want to be isolated in a world that really just doesn't GIVE A FUCK ABOUT ME.

Nobody calls. Nobody texts. Nobody writes. Nobody asks me how I am and wants the truth. I'm in the blackest of black despair. There are needles in my heart, a storm in my head, and the only thing I can feel is pain.

Every day I fake it. I fake being ok, because That's what I'm supposed to do.

And meanwhile, every night, I cry. I don't sleep. I don't eat. I drink, I cry, I think about what the most foolproof way to kill myself would be.

And you say how offensive it is.

Yeah. to me too.

I don't get to choose differently. fuck. I wish I could. I wish I could get to choose to have someone hold me when it gets this bad. To sit there and listen to me when I cry out in pain.

instead I just have to hide it away to even get the slightest bit of acceptance.

why can't anyone help me?

I love poetry

The sound
of words
as they

echo
across the page
The space

between the
thoughts


and the
clatter clatter patter
of consonants
I like the sounds
and the between
meaning
the things

said

and unsaid.

I spent this week doing things to try and take care of myself. Trying to be nice to myself. I died my hair, painted my nails, went out to a comic book store and for sushi. Went to an art gallery. And I did all those things alone. Yes, they're comforting on some level, but when you sit in a little restaurant, a tiny table for one in front of you, watching the couples and families and groups of friends around you, you want to cry. Cry, because your life is basically over. You missed your chances to be loved.

Empty

You ask me how I am. And I try to change the subject, because I don't want to answer. Don't want to hurt more. Don't want to be stuck in the loop where you make me feel worse about myself because I feel bad. Like, hey, STAY POSITIVE. What the fuck do I have to be positive about right now? I'm sorry I misunderstood you leaning on me for company and support and caring as wanting a relationship with me. Sorry you never managed to do the one thing I asked of you, which was to fucking tell me that you didn't want to try dating me. Sorry that now you're going through stuff, and I'm not there for you, and that "every time we talk it devolves into this shit".. I'm sorry, because I don't want to be in a shitty dark place right now, but this is where I am. Do you want me to lie to you? Because I can totally start doing that. I'm good at that, good at not showing how much in pain I am. You said that I didn't break the relationship we had, but the truth is, I think I did. I know you don't actually want to see the real me now. You just want that shiny person who worships you and entertains you and takes care of you when you're sick. That selfless, empty drone.

It's ok. I can be that. I am empty, anyway.

There's nothing left in me. I'm so heartbroken.

Even people who say they love me don't want to hear this stuff. They don't want to hear how hard it was to go to work on Mother's day and see all the shiny happy mother posts on facebook. All the babies I'll never have, the love I'll never get to experience. They all get to have those things, and I never will, because I'm this broken, ugly, empty thing.

I never realized that I was such a sacrifice for you. That spending time with me took away from all the other things you want in your life. Didn't realize that I was this burden.

of course, I should have.

should have realized that nobody really wants me around.

is it always going to be this way?

Like, right now, I'm sitting here writing this, tears rolling down my face. In pain.

And in the other window, I'm asking you how you are, giving you support with your family things. of course, you say you don't need support, but frankly, that's delusional bullshit. I don't think you realize how often in recent months you've turned to me for exactly that. You message me at 7 am when you need it, there have been days where instead of doing what I wanted to do, I drove over to you to make you feel better. Brought you drugs, whatever. Or I sat and listened to you rant for hours.

I get it. You don't need emotional support, because you don't realize that you're fucking getting it.

But I don't get it, so it becomes obvious when I'm asking for it. Trying to get it. Even though I don't seem to deserve it.  Even other people, I asked for help, and I get forgotten about.

I'm heartbroken.
I'm lonely.
I don't see the point of doing this anymore.

I asked you to back off, because I can't be that for you right now..


And you don't want to be that for me.

Nobody does.

I'm seriously considering ending my life.
I'm not sure that I can ever make it out of this hole I'm in.
I can't continue my life this alone. I just can't.
Nobody I ask for help seems to want to help me.

I just wish I was high on someone's priority list just once in my life. High for me, not their own personal use, abuse or gratification. I wish someone just wanted to sit down with me, and help me figure out how to be happy, because they wanted to.
Because they cared about me for a second, more than they cared about someone else.

Is it too much to ask, for just a second of caring?

A second of time where someone thought "how can I make her happy?"

and it didn't involve their wallet

All I see before me is a series of empty, soulless days.

Nobody to come home to. Nobody to go places with.
Nobody to take care of. Nobody to love.
Nobody.
Just me, coming home to me.

And I don't even like myself.

Why would anyone else?

Maybe if I take a knife to a vein.. then someone would care.

Maybe someone would shed a tear for me.

I don't know.

I think their tears would be for them. Guilt, maybe. I'm not sure there would be anyone really really sad if I died.

Maybe my parents.. but then, I think it's still about them.

Why should I keep trying so hard to get nowhere?
Work so hard to be hated and reviled and loathed and ALONE?

I'm still trying to be there for you and you've disappeared again.

Whatever.

I'll disappear soon too, I think.

CARE why won't you care

why am I screaming 

and screaming

about hurting

myself

but you just keep saying to STOP

like I can just choose to not hurt

to not hate myself

Another day

all i asked you
was for the truth
because finding it myself
made a deeper trough for the pain i wallow in
i know you think
that i want someone to fix my pain
but that's not it
my pain is because there is no someone
no heart
to cherish
no body
to shield me from the world
to share me
to love me
don't I deserve those things
that others have?
when you have a bad day
and i listen to you
for hours
ranting
it is because I cared
but you just
took advantage of my heart
my need
to take those things
you wanted
and leave
nothing
behind.

feel like i'm screaming
and nobody hears
feel like i'm dying
and there's nobody there
feel like it's pointless
to keep moving on
why keep on trying
if everything is gone?

can't feel my hands
can't feel my feet

nothing there
but sadness i can't beat

why am i lonely?
because i'm alone
nobody there when i pick up the phone
thought you were
but it's just another lie
a way to fill the void
while i wait to die

i feel an existential angst tonight.
can't sleep, even though I need to be awake soon
can't stop thinking about the world, and my place in it.
and the fact that it's so hard to find someone to hold you who does it
because they value you, not your vagina, or your money, or some other aspect of their need.
all I want is someone in my life who can be by my side,
hold my hand while we stare into the dark of the future together.
feels like that's never going to happen for me,
more and more these days.
every date feels like a further step towards eternal loneliness.
all they want from me, really, is sex.
i'm not a vending machine - you don't get to put in dinner, and get sex in return.
this coin slot aches from lonely, disconnectedness
it's so sad, so heart rending, every time you try and keep the suspension of disbelief going - this one's a keeper, this one's different.
and then they aren't.

Wanderer, heart broked

I wander the world now,
though home is still here,
it is a mirror, showing me the things that are not mine anymore
I wander the world now,
unwilling to stop, to speak of what
the mirror showed me, when I crossed through
I wander the world now,
no sustenance,
little joy
I wander the world now,
Alone when I cry at graves for men long dead, long lost
I hated my children
I hated my wife
I hated them for happy silences, and joyful noise
I wander the world now, heart broked.
Will I die before I get penance for the life I lost?
That’s what they hope for.
Orange killed me, even before I wandered
One day, maybe I’ll be ok,
but wandering helps.

Bauble

Hold here, this round, warm thing

it glistens in the candlelight

an apple fresh from the tree, 

a bauble, rolling in the sun

it speaks of life, fair and true

souls captured in a glass

Hold here, this fascinating trinket, 

See pale gleam, moonlight’s visage

Hold here, this wonderful ornament

Adorning your face no more.  

Things Unbroken

Do not give me things unbroken
Things without place, or time, or name
Do not give me things unhistoried,
Things without story, or sadness.
Give me things which speak of lives,
Of hearts traversed, jars filled with sound.
Do not give me things unbroken
For I cannot see them, they are not real
My eyes are damaged, new born is blind
Give me things I can hold onto,
Through craven night, storm swept and cold
Give me things which have bled red blood
Do not give me things unbroken.
Give me something real.

Revelations

“Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days; be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life”
Dec 31st, 2012.
Dear You,
So I guess I should write some of this down, even if nobody ever gets to read it, I still feel like I should leave some record of the things I’ve seen and the things that have happened in the last few days. I know it’s not really likely that there will even be someone to read it, but maybe in a million years, some archeologist will discover it and know the truth about what happened to us.
The thing that gets me is that before the last week, there were signs everywhere that something was coming, but we all called the few people who believed crazy, conspiracy nuts, delusional psychos. After all, nothing really all that bad had ever happened to the global civilization in our memories, no matter how many doom and gloom predictions there had been, they were all wrong. Like that guy, Harold Camping. Said the Rapture was going to happen in 2011, and the worst thing that happened was a bunch of hoaxers leaving clothes around all over the place, like they’d been raptured up to heaven.
The thing that we hadn’t really comprehended, I guess, in our arrogance, was that just because something has not happened yet, doesn’t mean it will never happen. Just because the farmer feeds a chicken every day of it’s life, so the chicken thinks it’s his friend, doesn’t mean that he’s not going to chop the chicken’s head off when it’s time.
Silly us. Of course, no matter how bad the predictions were, I don’t think anyone really saw this coming. Not what would happen, and how.
The crazies and the paranoids especially had talked a lot about December 21st, 2012, but in truth, it started a while before that. 2012 had been a strange year all around really, what with record temperatures around the globe for the umpteenth year running, Hurricane Sandy giving New York and New Jersey a nice bath, escalating tensions running around the middle east, Syria cutting off their internet and loading up weapons, Israel and Palestine at it again, etc. etc. So much stuff happening that most people just seemed to bury their heads and ignore the noise. What could you do, really? Shop shop shop! Vote in the psuedelections?
The first domino to fall though, that was something weird, nobody saw coming, and to be honest it seemed like nobody even really noticed. Branislav Milinkovic, Serbian ambassador to NATO, in the middle of a conversation with some delegates in an airport parking garage, walked calmly up to a barrier, climbed over, and jumped to his death before the people he was talking to could even react. They were shocked, confused, and every one of them said that before he jumped, he’d seemed perfectly normal.
The conspiracy sites had speculated of course, talked about how there must have been something shady going on, maybe the other delegates killed him, maybe someone used mind control on him and someone had inadvertently said the suicide trigger word, maybe maybe maybe. Mainstream media though, if they covered it at all, just called it tragic, said there’d be no further investigation.
Looking back now, though, you could see it had been the first real sign. Branislav had just wanted to get in ahead of the rush, I guess. Didn’t want the hassle of seeing the world just fall apart.
See, the thing that nobody had ever really pointed out about the whole apocalypse thing, was that one day is a really short period of time to have everything stop, to have the world fall apart. Just because the Mayan Calendar was going to roll over another digit, like some mega millions jackpot, didn’t mean any of us were going to win on that day, specifically.
So, yeah, the first domino, Branislav, that was Dec 5th. The second one happened a week later, on 12/12/12. Tons of people were planning to party that day, last repetitive date any of us would ever see, most likely. The second domino, though, that was a little more extreme than the first. At 12:12pm, the Earth started to rebel. I guess she’d gotten tired of drilling, and fracking, and everything we’d done to her in the last century or so. First of all, just a few minor quakes, here and there around the fault lines of the world. Some books falling off a shelf, maybe, grandma’s favorite shepherdess figuring getting broken. Nothing to write home about. But then the big ones hit. Mag 10 quakes starting with Turkey, and moving around every major fault line, with Tsunamis to match. Never heard of a mag 10, right? See, the thing is, the earthquake scale is exponential, with every number not being just one degree worse, but like, 10, or 100, or 1000 times worse. Nobody had ever needed a 10 before. The few news broadcasts unaffected said that scientists had called it unprecedented, completely beyond what any of their models had ever predicted.
Like I said before, just because it hadn’t ever happened, didn’t mean it couldn’t. Some places just got washed off the map, seemed like. Cuba was just gone. Drowned and pounded for hours by earthquake and tsunami, there wasn’t enough left to even really identify where it had been. Just a sandbar and some floating wreckage in the ocean.
The U.S got off lightly, comparatively. About a third of the country was gone, straight up from the gulf of Mexico. Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, just big saltwater lakes, and giant holes in the ground. The rest of the planet suffered similarly. It was like Mother Earth thought she needed a facelift, and instead of just a quick botox shot here and there, she tore off her whole face. They said the death toll was around 2 Billion, worldwide.
Couldn’t get much worse, right? Almost a third of the world population gone in a day? Wrong. That was just the start of it. Obviously, every economy worldwide just collapsed. Nobody was going to work, except those hero types like firefighters and soldiers, and even then, some of them had realized that the only thing they could do would be to rescue their own families, take care of their own. Still, the selfless types did their best to save as many as they could.
Every hospital was full to bursting, too, trying to save those they could. But that’s where the third domino really got going. It wasn’t even one thing, not one worst fear, it was all of them. Drug resistant TB. MRSA, Ebola, Avian Flu. The big ones. The stuff that we no longer had the resources to cope with. The news (playing on every station you could find) just said to stay home, avoid people. Too late though, so many more people died that they just had military driving garbage trucks around to pick up the dead bodies, at least, some places. Some were just written off as beyond help. That all started happening around the 21st, the original Doom-day.
The last domino, though. That happened yesterday. I’d managed to stay relatively safe. Michigan was one of the areas that hadn’t been hit too hard by the mega-quakes, and the cold weather already kept so many people indoors, that the plagues had a hard time spreading. We had it good, at least, compared to a lot of the rest of the world. Greece had completely collapsed, would probably never recover, along with a lot of the rest of Europe, and the Middle East had basically decided that now was a great time to get on with their blowing each other up agendas, maybe thinking that there were just fewer people to stop them eradicating each other completely, I don’t know.
But for us,the US seemed at least likely to recover eventually, even if the landscape was different, and a lot of the people were gone, well, we had that pioneer spirit, right?
That’s when the last domino fell. Turns out, some of those people with journalism degrees actually understood that journalism wasn’t just reporting what was happening, even though there was a lot of it. Some of them understood that journalism meant finding out the truth behind everything. And they did.
Every channel remaining, TV, radio, the few sites you could still get to on the internet sometimes, all of them, at noon on Dec 30th, broadcast the same message. It was a reporter, one of those you see in the background on some news shows, not a personality or any big name. But he’d discovered, he said, that the world governments had known what was coming. Had known about the Mega-quakes in advance. They’d been warned by seismologists, who’d seen the writing on the wall, so to speak. They’d known because of minor tremors and patterns, and sophisticated computer models. They’d known because they’d been told that the frakking they’d been allowing all over the planet, it had destabilized the tectonic plates in just the wrong way. And they’d known, because ultimately they’d caused it. They’d set off a chain of nukes, on the fault lines east of Madagascar, in the hopes of relieving the tension globally, by removing a chunk of one tectonic plate. No matter how many people, scientists included, who’d argued against it, argued for stopping the drilling and the frakking and finding alternative energy sources and letting the planet settle, well, the big money-funded politicians had decided that this was the solution they wanted.
This was the final domino. Governments around the world had known what was going to happen, and hadn’t warned people. Hadn’t even said “Hey, maybe you should try and stay home this day because we’re going to play pool with the planet. Half the people on the planet had died already, from the quakes or the pandemics, and the remaining half, well, that was it. We’d had enough. As the reporter had been finishing his story, live on TV, he’d been shot. Blackwater special ops teams had stormed the building he was in, stopped him talking, but not soon enough. We’ve had it, we’ve had enough of other people deciding that their money is worth more than our lives. So I’m writing this, because I want someone, someday, to know what happened to us, and why. We’re going to do it. We’re going to find all the places that the powerful people hid themselves, and exterminate them. I don’t expect to come out of this alive, but then, since when did anyone come out of life alive? Maybe Revelations is right. Maybe the faithful can hold on and receive the crown of life, don’t need to worry about death. The thing is, I know those politicians who read that thought that they were the ones, they were the righteous and the faithful.
We’re going to show them how wrong they were.

Save Yourself

It felt like worming through the birth canal, miles long, twisting and falling through a tunnel that held me tight, then spit me out here. I’m at the bottom, in a garden, I guess. Though it seems a little bare, patches of worn earth showing through the grass, what seem like gigantic dandelions taking over in other areas. As I try to move forward, I’m stopped by brambles, huge thorns dripping what looks like red sap? Do plants have red sap? I push through them, for I can see no other way forward. They hold me, scratch deep, until I am trapped. I cannot move forward, I cannot move back. I turn and squirm, trying to free myself, but there is nothing I can do. I search  my pockets vainly for a knife, a pair of scissors, something I can use to cut my clothing free, hack through the brambles and tangles.

But my pockets, they don’t hold a knife, or a pair of scissors. All they hold is a small, broken, plastic doll. It is missing an arm, the empty socket staring back at me accusingly. This doll, I had her when I was small, I haven’t seen her in a long time though. I don’t know what she means or why she is here with me. Her name was Persephone. As I move her around, I feel the brambles squirming a little. Interesting. I wave her at the nearest tangle, and it shirks away, like water rolling downhill. I try and free myself with Persephone, but as I free an arm or a leg, another becomes trapped again.

What can I do? I move her again, and a thorn touches her leg. It dies completely, but when I try this on another thorn, the dead one grows back.

If Persephone is all I have, I cannot leave her here in order to free myself - I may need her company later. But perhaps I do not need all of her. She is already missing an arm, a leg will not hurt. I pull one free, and touch it to all the brambles. They release me, and die. 

I leave it there, and move forward. A river, raging and swift has appeared before me. Funny, that I did not hear it’s roar before, but here it is. Behind, I cannot go back into the brambles, so I must move forward. The river, too dark and deep to swim, just like the brambles, cannot bear the touch of Persephone. But it surges back, when I pull her out.

Still. She does not need that last arm.

I throw it in.

The river subsides, water gone.

And then, the desert. Heat baking my skin so quickly I feel as though the core of me has molten, turned to lava. Roiling around my insides.

The doll does nothing to the desert, but perhaps I need her to do something to me.

I struggle with my fingers, until I pull out her right eye. Smooth and slick, swallowing it feels almost like swallowing a pill. Almost.

I try not to think about cannibalizing my doll, and it feels like the eye has worked. I don’t feel like I’m melting any more, and the desert is fading to night. Far in the distance, I see a torch, coming toward me.

A man and a wolf slowly appear, the man looking calm and wise, but the wolf snarls at me.

I brandish Persephone at it like a weapon.

“Do you want my doll too?”

“That is a doll no longer. Only one eye and one leg remain. That is a doll no longer, it is just a thing, broken and useless.”

“So? I gave up the parts of it, to get this far”

“But now it is not a doll. It is not the thing it was, because you sacrificed her movement, her action, and her vision, and now she is not”

“It was just a doll. Why won’t you take some part of it, and let me pass?”

“When you sacrifice the things that you are, just to move forward, you have lost the essence of perfection”

“What do you mean?”

“You could have beaten any of the challenges in front of you, without sacrifice, if you wished to try. But you did not, and now there is nowhere further to go, because your soul is empty. Your only choice is to begin again, to rebuild the doll anew. Go.”

As the man and the wolf disappear, and all is blackness, I start to scream.

Joy

Don’t postpone joy. The turn of the page, the slow sojourn from day to day. Lulled into complacency, the days pass like silent assassins. Dripping down the side of the candle, it’s easy to lose the prospect of joy. Settle for average, for normal, for making do. The crash of minutes drowning out the clarion of purity.
Don’t postpone joy, for soon it will be too late, a bottle of pills, a harsh collision, a choking cough.  A thief of breath, time steals. It is sadness, the days behind me, no longer to be lived or loved or laughed, only lost. Did I measure them, when I was young? Or only see them stretching like the endless road in front. No need to hurry to my destination, it would always be there tomorrow and tomorrow.
A moment, linger here among the flowers, the hill too hard to climb today. Wait for tomorrow. But tomorrows and tomorrows they careen by, faster than before. I miss you, miss the words I didn’t value enough, the times, I didn’t answer. A drawing of a tree is not the leaves upon it, but the suggestion of a tree. A map of your wrinkled skin is not your life, but a suggestion of the roads you have traveled. Or the joys you have not lived. The dance you did not do, the words you did not say.  The help you did not ask for, only the footsteps fading from sound and sight, and searching.
Don’t postpone joy, for it cannot be lived again, or loved again, or laughed again. Fleet Mercury stole it from me, his winged shoes fluttered by so fast that you were gone before I knew it or felt it or thought it.
I take your words and stamp them upon my soul. Don’t postpone joy. Live in it.

Raining Cats and Dogs

Leaning against a window, the heat inside the bus creates a slightly humid, but welcome feeling as his soaked clothes slowly dry, along with those of the other passengers. The steamy glass, already hard to see through, reveals almost nothing of the streets outside. A blur of water cascades down the outside, and all he hears is the rumble of the engine, and the swish of tires on wet pavement. Fountains of white obscure the world outside the bus every few minutes, and he feels as though the world has ended, but nobody remembered to tell him. Street lights, glimmering orange in the dark, could be stars exploding and burning the atmosphere, for all he knows. He huddles closer, his damp clothes small comfort. And soon, the cocoon taking him onwards will be left, it’s small sanctuary replaced once more by the wind, and the water, and the cold.