Questions

No, I don't understand it any more than you:
why I turn from the things I want the most,
why I always long to find the source of the smoke,
why beauty inevitably makes me think of ugliness,
why the trusting seem like fools to me but liars even more so,
why I refuse to let certain pains fade away,
why my guilt is not an elephant in the room so much as it is a snake coiled in my lungs,
why I avoid thinking about my own happiness as much as possible,
why I hold so many names in my heart like glistening gemstones,
why I was so willing to fall in love until I began to,
why I have an anger that will not be quieted and cannot be stilled,
why I did not think of death when I was dying.

Faces

It was quiet
until it made a noise
like a gunshot
It tore the air
like it might through
flesh and the
pounding
in so many ears
I watched and said
nothing
I was simply a
bystander
Nothing to say and
no words to add
A typical woman
and a
"stereotypical"
man
I felt the need to speak
but words felt
redundant or
overly simplified
It was your everyday funeral
of the unknown
I shed a tear for her
the woman whose face was
beyond my recollection
Goodbye
I will dream of you
of that I can promise
Hello
Goodbye
I miss you
and
you were loved

Burn It Down

The days blend into one another, dissolving like paper on the concrete after so much rain.
The burning echos of your words fade, and the dull bruises in all those dark places barely ache anymore. Who were we back then, that we fought so viciously? We sought purchase on one another's weaknesses like desperate people going to war, trying to gain ground when there was nothing of value to win. Did you see how cramped I felt, inside of my own skin? I was clawing, scratching my way out -- you were only in my way. It wasn't you I wanted to hurt; it was myself and my own foolishness that I was trying to destroy. I wanted to smash the mirror that reflected the sorry soul that avoided my eyes, day after day, but you stood in the way of my fist! You loved the crumpled being that I was, and I perversely, unconsciously, needed to prove to you that I was as despicable and undesirable as I knew myself to be. So I lit a match and I threw it upon us, deliberately destroyed something I knew could save me because I needed to burn a part of myself to the ground before I could begin again.

Bottom of the Well

I ran from the world in the same manner that I ran from myself. It was a frenzied thing: thoughts scattered; emotions torn, raw, bloodied; reasoning and motive nonexistent. To me, running was the only outcome. It was my way to escape when no other solutions were clear.
But what is it that I am doing now, down at the very bottom? I tumbled, plummeted straight down, until I hit rock-bottom with a crash that shattered every paradigm, every preconceived idea that I had about the reality of the world that I had run from. And, of course, myself.
I questioned. I tasted of myself and my surroundings with the taste buds of my soul, and I pondered. Answers, questions, unanswered questions, doubts, dreams, and mysteries pierced at my being with every breath drawn. I was a blank slate, unmolded clay, a canvas yet to be painted upon! The world was new, and I stumbled, unsure and new myself. To be overwhelmed at the magnitude of things is a little like waking up naked in a room full of people you don't know: you feel vulnerable, embarrassed, alarmed -- and either very, very large or very, very small.
The question that remains here is this: am I running back to where I came from, or further away? Or perhaps I am not running anymore at all, and am simply frozen, unable to move, unwilling to change; stagnant in my way of life, my way of thinking, my way of self; utterly immobile, broken, dead.

Unknown

First, I thought summer would mark the end of school: of graduating and of moving in with the one person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And then, I thought it would bring an end to everything I'd held dear; I thought it meant the start of a new life in a different city for him, goodbyes, and thousands of "what if...?". Shortly after that, I believed summer would be something of a reprieve from sorrow and confusion. Now I see that summer was truly a time of anger and of pain, of screaming fights and insults that stick inside the mind for years, of hatred.
I understand now that disappointment should be expected around every corner. Nothing is ever as easy as you want or expect it to be. That's life, isn't it? Ever uncertain, always changing, forever indistinct. I guess the only thing to be said about it is that it's nothing to cry about. After all, what's an adventure without a little bit of rocky sailing?