fact and fiction.
sometimes more, sometimes less.
Theres me and theres my cigarette and then theres the night and I feel like its all I really need.
It wasnt the best thing, but it wasnt the worst thing, realizing why I loved you so hard and so much and why still it consumes me. It was a different version of you that I loved, someone you used to be, someone I knew, someone I missed.
And honestly, I dont even know how to handle myself anymore.
Why is it that my dreams revolve around you so constantly? I used to love my dreams, I treasured them, but now when I wake up for them, I hate them for only visiting me at night. Its almost sick the way I want to live inside that world more than this one. Even though Im always running to find you, catching a half-second glance of your face is better than nothing. Even though I always wake up crying, its worth it, knowing you exist in my dreams at the very least.
Reality is not enough.
Youve never asked me again, maybe you dont want to hear it just as much as I dont want to say it.
I miss this summer, everything was easy and there wasnt a thing to do. Nobody gave a shit and we danced and we drank and we laugh and we stumbled around the town, holding hands and howling at the moon.
When we were dating, Id fall asleep talking on the phone with him. I would tell him everything about me and he accepted it all and now looking back and the crazy dreams, the useless wishes, I miss being so naive.
I was so young.
Its been a long time, its been such as long time and I think the reason for that is because Ive been losing myself, I used to be filled with such hope for my future, for changing the world, for everything, but instead what do I do? Drown myself in liquor. And when the bad shit happens, I have no one to blame but myself.
And when I saw you tonight, I just wanted to reach out I wanted to touch you but distance separates us it separates me from you and the only way to connect is through a computer.
You dont know this but when you were looking the other way, I was tracing your profile on my computer screen, every single curve was mine.
” I saw you in my dream last night. You were wearing my Bob Marley sweatshirt and we both cried. I kinda really miss you.”
Its this single statement thats convinced me that Im not alone. We talked some more and throughout it I found out that you miss me just as much as I miss you. Youre just as lonely as I am and even though your halfway across the world, at least we can be reclusive together.
We built a life together, you could have painted it and sold it to someone who was longing for our kind of perfection. But what you didnt see is how the smiles were strained, how our eyes each told a different story. You didnt see way I tried to hold onto her and the way she constantly danced just out of my reach.
She was never truly mine.
She told me she was, we had it on paper. We had witnesses, a whole church filled with witnesses.
“I do.”
She didnt.
And after she left me, “I never stopped loving him, Im sorry.”
I opened up our photo albums and sadly traced every smile of hers that was plastered on the pages. Now I noticed how fake they were, how they never reached her eyes.
“I feel trapped. Limited.”
I had only wanted to give her the world.
She stretched out lazily and turned her head to look at me.
“Someday,” she began, taking a deep pause so that I’d prepare myself for her impending philosophical words, “someday, we will look back on these days and we will wish to have them back.”
I snorted.
“Thats it? Those are your words of wisdom? Good job. Youre such a fucking sage.”
She shook her head and glanced at the sky, puffing out her cheeks in frustration.
“Think about it. Everything about our lives right now, everything, we’ll never be able to have this back. These songs, this night, you and me, this is it. Hold on while it lasts, because the next time you open your eyes we’ll be middle aged with a family and at least two mortgages we’ll probably never be able to pay off.”
And so I did think about it. I imagined not living like this, and that made it seem like everything was actually pretty alright. Like it wasnt the end of the world. The fact that someday I would long to relive this, it made me want to put it all in a bottle; my hopes, my dreams, my fears and my tears, I would never get it all back. And it was the saddest I had been in a long time.
“I told you so.”
I rolled my eyes at her as I lit my cigarette and slowly shook my head.
“Youre annoying, you know that? Youre really fucking annoying”, I muttered as I tried to pretend she wasnt right, like my life wasnt fading away like the smoke off the end of my cigarette.
Today the church across the street from me was having a funeral. People were filing in at a slow steady pace, holding hands all dressed in black. I sat on my steps, smoking my cigarette, listening for tidbits about the deceased. I listened as hard as I could but the only sounds I picked up were low mumbles, stabbed with the occasional wail. I was so tempted to cross the street and join them. I want to get lost in someone else’s sadness besides mine.
I found you a long time ago. If I could pick any place in the world to call my safe spot, it would be in your arms.
She lunged at me and thats when I remembered the knives behind me. Thats when the monster took over my body and thats when I knew she didnt stand a chance. I grabbed them and she tried to catch herself before she impaled her own shoulder on one of my knives. She backed against the wall and I just kept stabbing her over and over and over until I looked in her eyes and thats when I started screaming. She was me and I was her and I looked down at my body and saw my own blood pouring out. She tried to come at me one more time so I stabbed at her neck and felt the warmth trickle down my chest, pooling at my feet.
I thought I had to fight the world but my biggest demon had become myself.
