Breathing Rhythms

because we're lying here barely breathing lungs compressing the need for touch
because aloneness is more manageable when I don't linger on hollowness
the disease that capitalizes on people's need for togetherness
hunger for familiar skin and identical breathing rhythms
creatures of habit we run into each other over and over again
until stripped of one another we are whole in our nakedness
left alone with empty sheets and the singular melodic in and out of breath in an empty chest
empty air beside us
and the world feels large and hollow
and strange void of familiarity
sometimes sheer time stripped of all pretenses is unmanageable
it presses on stronger shoulders with the heaviness of hands once gentle
steals the breath right from my chest
and the humming of electricity in an empty bedroom is shrill against the backdrop of silence
because only crazy people mutter to themselves and we need each other for communication
simple in its innocence
I need you for your simplicity
because breathing alone is harder than crying together
sometimes lying here alone outlines all the places you used to lie next to me
and breathing rhythms are shattered by a loss of harmony

Feeling Lonely and Grasping at Thin Air

I guess I'm just grasping at singular particles of thin air trying to
Feel less alone
Breathing out the need for touch because
At the end of the day I just need someone close by
Someone to lace words around the edges of midnight and
Someone to make me feel human
Because we're all just human and I'm only human
But sometimes I can barely breathe beneath my self-inflicted pressure
And I'm not good enough for the way your eyes are
And maybe it's not even you I want but just someone
My head is filled with cobwebs of thoughts like grenades
And I'm waiting here for you to pour light into all my dark places
Maybe waiting is futile

It's Because of This

It's because I was there when you emerged into this world mouth wide open, wailing the house down
One hand stuck in a thumbs up and one in a 'live long and prosper'
It's because I was there when you rode your first bike
Had your first Christmas,
Lost your first tooth and your first best friend
It's because we were teammates like warriors
We battled parental supervision and bad teachers like soldiers
It's because we were covered in mud climbing trees and making forts and
Jumping through sprinklers with Mr. Freezies dangling from our lips
It's because we bounced along country roads in the dead of summer on the longest road trips
With only ourselves, a sketch pad, a pencil, and a roll of toilet paper to keep us busy
It's because I was there when you fell down and won big and worked hard
Through mishaps and running jumps
It's because you were always there for me too
You were the youngest one, but I wasn't always the one doing the helping
You saved me more times than I can count
It's because of all this that we're intrinsically bonded
It's because of this that you will be the hardest to leave behind

Consciousness

I guess I just try so hard to be whole, to glue pieces of other people and other places and other things on to the skin that only wants to rip itself to shreds. Because deep inside I'm still that fourteen year old girl that never died and she's still alive inside of me. Deep inside I'm still angry and I'm still hurting and sometimes I still hate myself. Because after the storm subsides it does get better but it doesn't get easier. There is still struggle and a post-war landscape is always left riddled with scars that conjure memories of bullet wounds. And as hard as I try to prove to myself that I am okay, that I am a different person, that I need to be whole to do the things I want to do... as hard as I try to cover that landscape of fallen trees and trenched ground that fourteen year old will always resurface. And I guess it's because we can never cut a part of ourselves out, remove a piece of our existence because then what would we be? We would be incomplete, so the removal of our past to feel whole again represents the paradoxical nature of human consciousness. That's what I hate about it all sometimes: the consciousness. The awareness that I am not like everyone else, the awareness that nothing is guaranteed and happiness often arrives with strings attached. It's that unwillingness to drift that gets me, the unwillingness to succumb to passivity. Struggle leaves scars but develops muscles and nurtures thoughts. And that's what I'm blessed with: thoughts. Consciousness. Awareness of imperfections that allow me to criticize drifting. And it's scary. It's a 3D movie in high definition with the volume cranked and it's skydiving without a parachute strapped to a lover and it's climbing a mountain without a cable safely fastened to the ground. It's free-falling and it's anxiety. I'm constantly scared, perpetually thinking of all the ways it could all crumble down around me. I'm constantly sad, the dull pulsation of uneasiness that comes with seeing the shadows when we're only meant to notice the sun. The ache and swelling of internal tears because I feel everything magnified, and I feel his sadness on top of it. And I feel the collective ache of humanity as we sway in our drunken dance of semi-consciousness. And I'm constantly angry, angry at the people who don't have to feel these things. But I'm happy, too. And this is the great paradox. Because my ability to feel anxiety and sadness and anger and compassion permit me to feel happiness to the same intensity. And without these emotions the world would be shades of grey and writing would be verbs and nouns and sentences and he would just be a pronoun. And stories would be narrative essays void of feeling and love would be comfortable. And maybe life isn't ever going to be comfortable but  nothing good ever is. "Nothing gold can stay" and the only permanence is derived of simply comfortable things. Comfortable things with no definitive endings but an infinity of comfort is nothing compared to a brief and intense burst of feeling, nebula to supernova a fleeting vision of stardust and galaxies. 

All I know is things will work out.

We gather scars and scars fade and we hurt again and this cycle continues and at the end of it the supernova remnants will illustrate our story and spell out the beautiful psychosis that was our lives.

I Do Love You

 We sit in the blackness of my darkened car, the last inches of sunset receding below the place where the trees join the freeway. I look at him as I pull the keys from the ignition, the engine rumbling to a halt. The emergency brake clicks on and I switch off my headlights, shutting out our last inches of light. His hair is outlined by the shivers of moonlight floating through the passenger window and it curls wildly around his ears. He's focused on something, god only knows what, as he continues to stare out the darkened window, reflecting his face back at us.

We were just kids, alone in a blackened vehicle as we flew through freeways with newfound freedom. We were just kids then, alone with lips flooded by stories we both craved to release. His words flew out faster than mine, I guess he'd had less time to work on the webbed walls we wore over our lips.

Last night I dreamed of you. In this dream we weren't parting and I wasn't leaving you behind. In this dream you loved me as I love you and in this dream you held my hand when I reached for yours.

I tell him of you as we sit there, my face turned away as "Futile Devices" plays on his ipod and he asks me if I want him to change it but I don't. The riffs and falls of I do love you replay in the darkness as I remember the way we walked forever, faces creased with laughter hysterical like falling in love.

"It's the loneliness, you know," he says, voice cutting through the darkness. Yeah. I do.

"It's the summer, the empiness in hot sheets. It's hard to fall asleep."

I can tell from the marks on his cheeks where tears have carved bloodlines that he has felt the hollowness that gnaws in the night.

 "It's the nights that are the hardest." His silence agrees with me. In the night I see the way your hair flopped over your eyes and you smiled at me under orange streetlights. At night I hear the way your laughter floated through the streets of this city like kites held down by the strings of our differing plans.

Some Days

I guess some days are better than others.
Some days I feel the very un-noticeableness of me, the infinity of forever and the imperfections in our perfection. Some days I feel you forgetting me. And everything feels unachievable and I'm not good enough and everything bleeds struggle. I cannot accept things as they are, the easy ebb and flow which used to control my thoughts. I worry. I worry that I need everything that is simply a want and I worry that I am unwanted. I worry that I will disintegrate into the void of nothingness without a trace. Some days I feel the crushingness of missing you and life apart from you seems impossible. And the length of our time apart feels insurpassable and everything is too much. Sometimes all the people I've loved and who've loved me only make me more acutely aware of my aloneness, my singularity.

Some days I'm drowning in this fear and aloneness and desolation and some days I forget that I am covered. I am not alone nor am I desolate. My greatest fears are diminished when I remember that I am only a star in a network of constellations and I have everything I need. I am safe and I am loved and I am breathing. It is enough to be breathing. And nothing I feel hasn't been felt by others to greater degrees and that makes me feel less alone. Because there's always a way, you know. There's always a Plan B, and you'll always be there when I need you. And preemptive worrying is only self-destructive because a rocket scared of never breaking the atmosphere will never ignite the fire of its engines to try.

I guess that's all we can do in this life. Try and breathe and work until our hands bleed and our lungs ache and we are tired and happy and fulfilled. And the fruits of our labour may vary and come disguised as thorns in our sides but they will be fruits nonetheless. Because hard work will never be met with nothing and there is always a way.

Some days are better than others. Some days remembering you hurts and some days it is the only thing that keeps me going. Some nights the quiet blackness brightens every memory of you and I am aware of every inch and second of the distance and time between us.

But some days I am okay. And some days, most days, I am happy.

You showed me happiness.

Fingertips

It's like all the faces of every kind and comfortable person are falling in shattered mosaics over the sun stretched membrane that has dried over my scorching heart and I'm craving rain like her soft fingertips that shudder my heart with their gentle tapping. Persistent, melodic down beats that ground me, pull my roots deep deep down back to this place where I have grown, my branches stretched up to the open sky bleeding down infinitesimally. And it's like I know how it feels, the emptying release of a thousand raindrops falling over dried skin. The pain that burns like summer heat, dissolved in the monsoon of tears. And it's comfortable, and I'm home. And I remember what closeness feels like.