Day 694: Unsettled

The night comes up swiftly
and harsh
the darkness
engulfing the daylight
and subjecting it to
unusual torture.
Here we go again.
My demons.
Your demons.
Your commonalities with me
are more than you care to admit.
The sun still rises, even through the pain.




Dreamscape.
I am losing crumbling teeth.
War zone.
Smoke and mirrors.
You.
Standing there in a uniform.
Torn and tattered.
Battered and bruised.
I am
Just
Like you.
Flash.
Bang.
You can recite ranks.
I remember

Each

of 

their 

names.

He 

(another)

left me for
Day light
and the
black hole
left
in his wake…
I won't speak about hard things.
I won't speak about ruin,
breakdown,
and failures.
But still
i clutch his keep-sakes
when I fall asleep at night.
I still dream.

The night comes
to torture me.
I am
more than ready
Ready every time
for the pain.
Re-live,
re-learn?
Something like that.

The pain never fades,
we just find new ways to push it away.
We convince ourselves

stories we tell

Each time

a new line. 

New 

lines.
but
it never fades.
I feel you every day
Every
Goddamn
day.

I lie in bed
waiting for
sleep
to overtake me.
Waiting for
(another)
fucked up
dreamscape.
Night terrors.
Heavy sleep sweats.
Soaking the sheets,
and
leaving me breathless
when I awake.
I've been here before.
I know
how
this goes.

Daybreak
isn't any better
though.
Like sitting through
a daze
a haze
of memories and
mistakes.
If I were an alcoholic
(like you)
I would drink myself
to sleep
each night
tears
streaming my face
and bottle in hand.
But I
have nothing to
abuse.
Nothing left
to use.

So
when you see my face
please
don't fool yourself
into thinking
that
somehow
i had it easy.
Nothing
in this body,
in this mind,
in this soul
has ever had it easy.
For the record,
I never judged you
the way
you judged yourself
or the way
others judged you.
I loved you exactly as you
were.
i loved you.
You never could understand that.
You never really believed me,
i think.
I don't think you know what
Love
is.
I don't think you have the capability of feeling
that deeply,
that intensely
for another person.
But i Loved you.

What a waste of time.

What a waste of time.

You keep your memories,

and I'll keep mine.

THATH

Last night,
instead of sleeping
I read.
i read a book
from a long time ago
a memory
I suffocated
under blankets and water.
I read a book
that spoke to me
and hurt me,
that made me think
and feel.
Her words on page 193
ripped through
my chest,
like the crack
of lightening,
setting fire
to young trees
on a hillside.
You couldn't possibly
understand,
you never really
got
me.

I don't want him, I say.

No, he says. What you want is for him to want you. When his wanting ends, it returns you to yourself. 

I want to delay that, I say.

Yes, he says. The imminent suffering within the present moment is difficult. And too, you want to be wanted in so much as everybody does. Well, he says, maybe more than some people. 

((pg. 193, The Meat and Spirit Plan, by Selah Saterstrom)) 

What is love,
really though?
Is it an emotion
we convince ourselves
we feel
to mitigate the
terror
of loneliness?
Or a deep spiritual
movement
connecting us
to 
something else?
I, honestly, 
no longer know. 
In the end, 
i simply wanted to be wanted 
by you.

There will be 
(another)
you.
The inevitable future holds 
more love
and 
more wanting to be wanted. 
And one day,
I'll be writing about him
the way 
I wrote about
you
and 
every one of them who came before you. 
He will 
make
my heart soar
to the moon and back,
before inevitably giving up on me
and my spaceship
goes crashing into the ground 
again;
rendering me 
defenseless, 
breaking my fragile body,
shattering my defenses.

But every time,
as every time before,
I will rebuild.
re-streghten the muscles,
re-learn to walk on broken legs,
re-lace up my running shoes,
and head back to the trail.
Until the day where
I don't need
someone else to want me,
because
I want
myself.
Some day.
one day.