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We would not need substances to reach the layers of ourselves that we are trying to touch,
if we hadn’t buried them so deep
We would not need substances to reach the layers of ourselves that we are trying to touch,
if we hadn’t buried them so deep
If I listen to the sky it tells me that sometimes we fall in love the way the leaves change in autumn.
A gradual shift in color, then a drop, all at once, blanketing our black and white hearts in vivid hues of orange, yellow and red, until suddenly, the world feels completely different than we remember it. Everything in us becomes light enough that we are stirred by the faintest breeze as it passes,
And I love you, I have decided,
the way the leaves change in fall,
the way the trees shed shamelessly,
branches exposed, feelings dropped at their feet like rain
I stared into my reflection a while this morning
and asked it what was wrong with me
“You’re out of your mind,” it replied.
So I’m just packing up the rest of my things now. I’ll leave the sleepless nights and the key to the back closet by the door, it’s mostly filled with thoughts of you, anyway. And you can keep the pointless talks and the photographs and the weight of wasted time. I’ve no need for them where I’m headed. I’ve no idea where that is, by the way, just that the open road has never looked brighter and no matter where it leads me, I will be free.
I’ll miss the neighborhood, but I’ll never miss who I was when I was with you.
It is maddening at times, this beating in my chest.
To lie awake and feel the rhythmic thud,
smooth stones falling into cotton.
Cold sweat percolating on my skin
as I think,
it’s but a sound that keeps me here.
A fleshy, fragile tether from which I dangle,
between this world of the living
and oblivion
Sometimes when I’m spiraling I think about how even if I could live forever, I would only ever live to see the day our sun swallows the Earth. Watch it burn away our wars and our hate and our dirt and our love and our children. Every single life ever lived; every battle ever fought.
My mind races and hopes that someday we build a spaceship, if not filled with people then with all the books we’ve ever written so they can tell the story of who we were,
and who we wished we could have been.
We are surrounded by the notion that the only way out is in front of us. That we should never look back because that’s not the direction we’re ever headed in.
Nobody mentions how important it is, as we get older, to retrace our steps back onto familiar ground, even if it’s painful.
Somewhere you can run your hands over the trees and every strip of bark feels like home. Surround yourself with what you recognize so that the next time you set out, you can fully reflect on and appreciate the experiences that have shaped you. The pieces of yourself you have decided to leave behind, and every beautiful thing that has sprouted up in their place.