Your words are so silent now, I don’t think I said anything yet. You count in your high regard and I wondered what it would take to have you look at me without hate. My heart speeds when I think you stopped by. I’m wishing for her to collapse you; I’m wishing for you to break away from her black venom. I look and I see you but you don’t see me. I am a shadow in disaster. I thought you could measure love but this is something else completely. It is everything and nothing but something or anything. I lose all meaning when all I ever wanted was to help you, and you said I tear you to shreds. But I don’t think it’s true. Maybe I am just exposing the darkness you wished didn’t exist, maybe I am holding you to confrontation and that is something you can’t do. I look for familiar faces but I swear, the sun comes after the rain, and I may bring out the monster but I can also calm it. All I wanted was to save you but now I am dying trying to keep myself alive.

There’s nothing but sickness in me when I imagine you entranced away with everyone else. I am wise enough to keep from anything sharp, for fear that I will rip to pieces. In the night, I lay awake dreaming of futures I know will come true. I have seen everything in my deja vus but I haven’t seen this, I haven’t seen you. So I let the earth circle the sun without saying a word but I can’t help but stare at the silent moon, the only one who does and doesn’t belong. I trap all my misgivings and I fear one day having the chance and losing it. I would much rather never have had anything at all. I smile as you cheer for the joys I sneak in, and I can’t help but hope that you miss me at least a little bit. I sleep under false stars and listen to racing cars, wishing to forget everything, wishing to rush away into the universe where the earth circles the moon.

Dear ________,

Please tell me that the last 536,112,000 seconds have meant something. Let me count the ways I know you. Let me rattle your brain and find myself in the mirror. How many years now? I am ashamed to say that the beginning is so blurry to me. Why can’t I remember all the memories? Everyone else tells me my timeline, but what happened to my head? I read about this rare sort of amnesia….maybe this is that kind of convolution. I look up at the moon, when I try with utmost desire to leave this world. I can’t see the stars and I can’t see my past. How much of my life have I lived not knowing my soul or the world? I have missed myself entirely in the way I trembled away from commitment. The words fall apart and I blank out at the start. I love you, but sometimes I wish I could run away from you and be nothing.

Love, ________.

I paint my flaws with all your criticisms and for some reason, I feel so close to you. I tilt my head at all your anger, wondering if did anything to set you off. You shout and you scream, so why do I still find you sweet as strawberries? I smirk with superiority but I shatter inside, for I have no one else to bestow happiness on me, I only have those that distract from sadness. I paint everything black, because only in darkness can I see. The tea has been placed on the porcelain table and I fear sitting alone. I wonder if you caught me again, but I have stopped caring. I can’t help but become immune with every war, but I am scared that eventually I won’t feel anything anymore.

The world turns to dust and I think of everything I never said. I can see you right next to me, hiding in the shadows with your infiniteless wisdom. You catch your sins twelvefold in endless ashes and I wonder if you ever knew how light and how dark you made my life. I question my sanity when I realize I’m okay with being like this forever. I guess I never thought myself worthy of love, rather, I just grasp the sadness from everyone else and save them instead. I used to be your savior, but now I’m your destroyer and you can’t possibly know how much that hurts. You wear your costumes of black and blue but I can’t help but wish to roll up the sleeves to reveal the lines and scars that rise beside the horizon.

I slip on intricacies that I thought I lost in my runaways. I try to hide the fact that I can see you everywhere. That I could be twelve million miles away and trace your echoes still. I wish and miss for the days I could pluck out a laugh from you. Now I just catch the leftovers that everyone else resonates. I thought I was a mountain, but maybe I am just the wind. Easily lost and easily unseen. I could be everywhere, I could be nothing.