LOVE LETTERS TO THE DEAD
TICK TOCK...
Work. I am so grateful for it stealing time. The minutes, the hours, the days pass, and I can breathe for a moment. Until I am still. It's where you find me, and I find you, beautiful.
Sitting...
The train is stuffed with people and the tears pour down my cheeks, quietly, but I am free. Everyone stuck in their own bubble, not noticing me, reading, sleeping, swiping left.
I fade in and out of being angry and I welcome it. I want to fucking hate you. I want to want someone else. I want to be fucking rid of you. I feel insane, broken, and pathetic.
Months and months, and months, and months....
I want to have sex, I need to have sex, feel beautiful and smile again. The only problem is I feel like I belong to you, not out of duty but out of it being so, for so many years.
I am a failure at dating, at being polite for no reason, games, political correctness, courtesy as a duty and giggling at bullshit to make people feel smart. I do that at work and I do it very well, I think of it like state and federal taxes. It's something that comes along with getting paid and part of the business of doing business, its not something I do in my personal life.
I also don't want to be in a relationship, as a matter of fact, I would rather stab myself in the face with a broken bottle, repeatedly. I don't want to get to know anyone yet either, I barely want to speak to anyone. I just want to find someone I find beautiful and sleep with them. I don't even know if I can do that, but I am going to try.
SHSH
Like a cat in search of treats, I prowl... I want to taste your tongue and feel your weight above me. I want to kiss you, over and over and over again. I want to breathe your breath and I want you buried inside me.
A voice is screaming at me. "Run!! You're making shit up in your head! Fuck someone else! Find someone young and beautiful and get them naked, as soon as possible. Drown in someones beauty, someones newness, even if for a moment, but fucking drown in it."
UNICORN
I am a yo-yo, up and down, in and out, round and round, spinning... Always going somewhere, but that somewhere is always a place I've already been.
I know how it feels there, I know how it feels to spin, I know how to spin, so well.
I hate you... My father, I fucking hate you. Every man that ever beat me, raped me, used me, and made me into a meat product for masturbation, I fucking hate you.
You taught me to be scared of men, even the ones I know won't hurt me. Even the ones I want to share my every breath with, my every, waking, breath.
I have given life to the tragic story. I have carefully built a path away from me, brick by brick, row by row, I have even taken your hand and dragged you down it, knowing you taking a step at my command to do so will be considered failure. Proof you don't love me.
I am sorry...
I want to cut it out but I can't...
Inside...
You can only clean and organize it. You can't remove any of it, it sits, even if you understand it, own it, or even if you don't look at it, it's there, breathing.
Memories, feelings, my hard drives coding... Fear... Love... How to be loved...
So many times, I stand, feeling like I have won, I am the head of the table at all the meetings and joy is the predominant soundtrack to my life. Raucous applause!!!!
I have tried all the drugs, fought all the fights, and drank you under the table... I have black holes where pictures sit, secretly, keeping me safe, for another time; And I have an agreement with the devil...
Nobody knows I come from filth.
I have found a place called happy in between the cracks, in life, in general, but it's only really felt with you.
Because everything I had to give, I gave to you, honestly, without abandon.
In love with you I am, desperately, completely...
It's only when it comes to being vulnerable, being in love, and being loved that the ribbons come undone.
I run, and I run fast.
It's hard to look at something beautiful and know that in some ways, it's broken, bent.
Nobody asks the guy in the wheelchair to stand up, ever.
I wish sometimes you could see, every broken bone, every bruise and battle scar bleeding. I know I keep it so beautiful, so often... But every now and then there is a breath that needs to come out, and I can only do it with you.
You.... are my everything and I can only give myself completely if I let myself be...
Scared sometimes.
I'm sorry...
I don't know how to make my body not feel terrified that what you say is not real, that love is not real. Even though I want it to be, I don't love myself enough to believe you. I can't find the place to not push, it feels safer and I can't stop it.
I push, I pull, never wanting you to leave. I don't know how to be loved, it's hard to search for something when you don't know what it looks like, then realizing it was there and you didn't understand it.
And now your gone.
I guess everyone feels that way.
It feels like a brutal punishment. I have survived my life only to survive my own happiness, using the tools that have kept me alive. Not needing... Testing and re testing... Escape plans... Running away... Keeping track, of everything, Being smarter, stronger, faster...
I have always hated the saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger."
It is not enough to survive.
To survive the things that are trying to kill you, one must become... Numb...
A kind of numbness that is listening, closely.
A kind of numbness preparing for a fight till the death.
I have done this, I have failed in breathing deeper before I ran, I was still expecting somewhere to be understood and I let my guard down...
I have never expected to see the unicorn...
And I still look anyway, that's obviously part of the problem...
I LIVE TO LOVE YOU
I want to talk to you, I want to hear your voice and listen to you breathe...
I want to taste your kisses and smell your hair...
I need you. I can't want anyone else, I desperately want to want, anyone else, even for a moment. But I can't.
I hate you...
Make love to me, please...
My body doesn't understand anything but you, it's as if I am allergic to any other man, they literally make me feel sick, and at the same time, I prowl...
I am desperate for this to end, I know it will, but it crawls, the aching, the holding on.
I can't stop thinking about you, about the way you make me feel, about the way it makes me feel to make you feel...
Love, I live to love you, and I am breathless to try and forget.
MOP BUCKET
You, seeping, like water spilled from a mop bucket... You are everywhere and you are drowning everything in your path.
I'm on my hands and knees trying to absorb the mess, trying to keep up, trying to clean up...
It's amazing how much dirt is always at the bottom, gritty, filthy, left over hair and skin cells mixed with the soil blown in from too many open windows.
I come up for air, feeling good about my work, some places even look better than they did before, and then...
There you are, under an old something.
More clean up, more mess, more crawling around trying to throw out what is completely destroyed and start over. I am tired, I wish you would just leave me alone, go away, take your foot out of the doorway!!! And I wish you would run to me with your arms outstretched like some bullshit romantic comedy made by thousands of people for millions of dollars and tell me you can't live without me.
Sigh...
I wish I could empty this mop bucket.
HUNGRY
So long it's been since I could stand the sight of my insides, I have been hiding, missing myself and you... Him... Her...
Love, I have been missing him, do you miss her? ever? We are relegated to schedules and pass each other through facetime and the fantasy of when I can taste anything like you again. The story, of us.
I am selfish, I want. I am trying desperately in my life to surrender to what is, because what is, is, what I want, wether I like it or not. It has been invited because I turned toward it's attention, in thought, in fear, in wanting, and here it is, as is.
I am selfish, I want to be wanted. A part of being a person... Wanting to be wanted, not just in a sexual way, but wanted. I want to not need. How do you do that? You feed yourself. How do you do that?
TREADING WATER
The things we said to each other, the smiles and looks we gave to one another. I want them back. I want to put all those moments back and not love you so very, very much.
I am stuck, floating in the ocean trying to find my way back to shore. Sometimes it's peaceful, warm, and I feel okay, lighter, I can float above water and even rest. Then the wind comes and I am tossed around, I am confused, it's dark, cold, and suddenly I am terrified.
I want to punch every couple I see right in their love stricken faces and scream " it's all fucking bullshit!! And no matter how in love you feel right now, it's going to die, it's going to end!!! " But I don't, I sit and think about you, the way you taste, the way you smell, and how desperately I want my hand in yours and to feel you, warm.
I sit, I stand, I walk, I cry... tears, they come, without my consent, they come. They never stop, it feels so good to cry like this. Heavy, desperate, with everything I am.
I cry on the train, I cry at the store, it just happens and I really don't care. I want it out of me, all of it.
I miss you, I fucking hate you, I want to lay with you and sleep, I want to kiss your scruffy face and I want you inside of me.
The things we said to each other, the smiles and looks we gave to one another. I want them back. I want to put all those moments back and not love you so very, very much.
I wish I'd never met you.
Get up, move, breathe...
I don't feel like it, I have to take a shower, I sit and drown, trying to pretend my heart is not breaking and I wish I could cut it out.
It's getting better, I am not crying every time I move, every time I remember you are gone.
Granted, listening to Hall and Oats on Pandora is probably not the best choice, and if I hear Adele sing that fucking hello song one more time, I may set myself on fire, not because it makes me sad, I just really hate that fucking song.
The sun is out and I am going to go outside, try to chase it's warmth and run away from my feelings.
BLUE
The fastest way to make a man fall out of love with you is to tell him he doesn't love you enough. He will surely take all the love he has with him as he walks out the door, just to prove you right.
My love, my heart, my every breath…
I love you…
Within your absence, in your silence, in your leftover words beneath my skin…
I hold you and how you made me feel in my bone marrow. I hold you leaving me the way you did within the iron of my blood. I hold my failing in loving you in a lifetime of regret. I’m so sorry I made you feel the way you did. I am ashamed that who I was caused you to want to run from me. Shame… I am ashamed.
Losing you that way has changed my being, my humanity. I am a better human because of you.
You are a gift to me, for always, forever…
Words written desperate, the want to find your ears, to find your heart, to hold your hand.
Please forgive me.
All I have is words, is love, is a heart broken with knowing I abandoned a love I wanted for the rest of my life. You, I failed you when everything within me wanted to be yours, yours, yours.
To love you, to love you, to love you…
Drowning in awe I sold myself a hiding place and I lost you. I felt that too late and became the worst parts of myself.
How do I put the puzzle back together? It’s all I want to do, be beside you …
How can I breathe life into the possibility that I am not the being you ran from, but the one that speaks to you from the quietest of places, the one you ran towards?
Baby, please forgive me, please.
You are so beautiful, so spectacularly colorful and I am in love with everything about you.
I lose my breath imagining your hands holding this paper, reading these words. Breathless thinking about the idea of being with you, even only in this way.
I have dreams where you are at my front door or walking up the stoop and I see you through my bedroom window. I wake up heartbroken all over again wondering where you are, wondering, does he think about me?
Every day…
Wondering…
Silence…
Your silence has been breathtaking…
Like an addiction my heart and mind re live every second, re winding, devouring the moments over and over and over again. I don’t forget your shoes, I don’t get nervous around the drunk guys getting pizza, I don’t go on a rant about customer service from the poor laundry lady, I don’t talk about joey, break down like a child, and allow my fear to overwhelm my intellect. I don’t do a lot of things I did the way I did them. In reflection, I was so selfish and at times grotesque.
There is a reason to my rhyme but it means nothing if not understood and if the reason destroys the rhyme. Rusty parts eat away at the beauty and disrespects my future. I am forever changed and grateful within this torture.
My heart has never known this kind of ache, my mind this kind of desperate need.
I have tried to breathe through you and deny the aching but I can’t. I have written to you so many times in e mails and messages I know you don’t get. Like a lunatic thinking perhaps I will just write it out and the feelings will die. But they don’t.
The feeling of confusion is malignant.
This feels like torture. Why? Why won’t you leave? Am I stuck here forever? I can’t breathe, the truth, it’s like poison and I am sick with it. I can’t push you out, you find a way, creeping, sneaking into me. You are inside me and I fucking hate it. It’s torture, to feel this, to be stuck so...
Is this the part where I am bound to you, for always? Why? You are a liar, a cheat, a monster and I despise you. And yet, I am hurting, aching, wanting and needing to smell you, be beside you, be loved by you. I have lost my way and don’t know how to find the pathway home.
I feel so useless, so stupid, I have lost all footing and with each breath I feel more like a complete failure. It’s not just you, but it’s you. We were going to have babies... We were going to be, one, for always. You lied, you lied so many times, I can’t believe this is who you have been, for how long? For always? Was I always feeding a demon? Was I always left, sidelined and tricked? Who are you? Who was I in love with? Where did he go? Did I kill him? I don’t understand what happened and how it happened the way it did.
When this life wears me out, I breathe through you. I have silent parts, broken. They somehow become quiet when I see you. This fake plastic dream of life I hold so precious, seeps with movement, all because of you. Each blade of grass holding me up feels softer, each ray of sun, warmer...
If I could be who you wanted, my heart would be safe, as you are all I want in my world.
I was a little girl once, she finds herself in you. Thanking you with tears, salty insides finally finding home. Thanking you with a painful heart, hoping, it’s enough. To love you for always, with every breath, touch and thought so sweet.
My little tiny heart stuffed in a grown up shell. Sometimes I feel so lost, still in the maze of mess called self, I always, always, find you.
Did I ruin it? Did I? How do you fit a square peg into a round hole? You bash it in… You smash it in, you tuck the corners under and try to stuff it in. It never really fits, the corners swelling out trying to regain its shape, much to the disgust of the square hole.
I don’t fit. I either push people away, they run away, or I cut them out. They never stay though.
I do it, I make it so, I, make it so. I must let go, I must give it up, I must grow up, breathe and be, better.
It’s too late…
My hand outstretched, but he has turned his cheek, he is gone.
I am starving…