I’m staring at a blank screen, starting then stopping, erasing and trying to find words to describe this whirlwind of I don’t know and how to proceed and what am I doing and it’ll all be worth it and am I failing and not getting there and waking up early and she tells me I push and they say that I don’t and I am confused and I am certain and I want to move forward and I don’t know what forward is and it’s either falling apart or coming together and I can’t tell which and I am always strong but I’m not always strength and I seem silent but I need to speak and I don’t have any answers to the questions I ask and I’m waiting and I am impatient and I want the truth and I can’t seem to find it and I break but I’m not broken and I give in to my emotions and I can’t know what is the right time and I am embarrassed by things I can’t change and I hear Sir and I need it and all of this incoherence as I stare at the blank screen
everything
Breaking down
Breaking down
Self imposed barriers
Last bastions of sanity
Last soldiers holding the line
Scraping out the lining of bags long closed
Opening doors nailed shut
Breaking down
Remember the pieces that didn’t fit the narrative of self
Remember the fights
Remember being young
Remember being stupid
Remember walking in front of speeding vehicles with a glib phrase and the secret desire to die
Breaking down
Remembering the unkind words and the immediate regret and the silence that followed
two people hurting and hurting each other to feel human for a few minutes before they went back to drowning separately
Remembering trying to be the hero for unheroic reasons
To rescue for the reward instead of to defend this battered soul of youth
Remembering days of loneliness and ache masked behind moments of epiphany
Breaking down
The long slow climb out of oblivion
Out of the things done and not done
out of the pits of what have I done
And the tainted desire for a little more
And the bitter poison fruit of vengeance
In whose seeds bore the sweetness of peace
Trying to save everyone because I could not save her
Waking paranoia because a moments inattention caused a lifetime of pain
Breaking down
There are lifetimes within lifetimes and deaths within deaths. Sometimes change is not enough and what was must be allowed to fade
Breaking down
Pelgris 