Caroline

I severed my affair with the dark when I realized that these hazy dreams have blurred into nightmares. Even the smoke of a well-lit secret can’t keep away the ghosts from my mind. Why does the present seem so far away? The past isn’t supposed to be haunting, but I guess God forgot about me when he handed out forget-me-now pills. Sometimes, when the moon masks its glow, I get down to the knees and beg for demons to take over the shadows of my mind — at least they wear their sins on their sleeves. People ask me who I am, but I forget what I am doing and remember my mistakes instead. People should really just leave me alone. Stop trying to romanticize nostalgia; nostalgia would be a gift compared to what bleeds through me. These marks are supposed to be battlescars, so why do they seem like tallies of how static my life has become? There is nothing to save me, but I don’t want to ask to be saved. When did truth become a fluid lie, and when did these blonde wisps curl into jaded piercings? Eighteen lights blow years into the night, but I only see eighteen lightyears until some door opens, and a hand grasps mine, and I hear a voice say “Sweet Caroline of mine, your adventure awaits.” But I am not a champion of light, and the nocturnal world has shunned me. Sometimes I beg to return to the honeymoon days, but even I know, as I am blowing out the candles, that I already swallowed the pills that took away nostalgia.