(no subject)
Waiting for the early train.
It is the edge of winter tailing behind it, predictable in the way the cold will wrap us and seep through layers. We are confined now, restrained in the structures of everything we have built to keep busy but there is no freedom when the cold can find all the secrets that you keep.
This city is a shadow of other places you have been and the headlights splash across me like tracer fire in the night, hunting. It is time to start running, they challenge you with how fast your legs will be this time, how sharp the edges. Do you have your own memories that hang from the stars? Do you know the same feeling as the night sky goes clearer when it gets darker earlier? Feel the cold ground entangling your shoes and up your legs, rooting you to the spot so that running is an afterthought.
I will make all my excuses, let my hands traces familiar curves that still hold empty promises of escape. I will watch while you trace my footsteps with your own path but hear nothing but silence along the way. I will let the headlights paint my walls at 4 am and wonder what other places this could be. Our histories are stories of opportunities that stir the imagination even as we prepare for the morning routine.
If I never called you would you show up, would you feel pulled by the same things and make your way to the stone steps of our city. Would your fingers trace the outline of the skyline and make all the memories with a faint smile as if there was nothing but fondness in the things that we don't speak of anymore. I wonder if there are answers somewhere, if this was going to help my cause. Then laughing at myself silently, nothing was going to help my cause. I no longer had a cause. This was leaving me because it was too much too soon, dangling from the minute hands.
You are my secret, my thing that sticks to pages with an intangible tenacity. Random sentences blended with strings and movements that I conduct with my eyes closed. Remember when you used to be everything, the potential almost overwhelming and ambition said that this was the way it was supposed to be. Instead I am sitting here angry, fingers fighting with words that lack the simplest expression. Call me a fool for the faith that I cling to even as you place your weight on the end of the line. Find your mark and let the lights find you, frame you there while you recite the lines with a conviction that beguiles the fantasy.
When did this become about the lacking, about the empty feeling that comes when the calendar starts getting thinner and last until the sun starts baking the brain and killing the feelings. When did it seeing you become everything that I can' stand and then smiling when I realize that it still doesn't matter.
"I'm sorry."
"Me too."
It was under the weight of the resulting silence that this was the part where I should have argued. Should have attempted to stir the embers of the passion that once epitomized our reflections. The moment where I said that you were wrong. I should have said that there is no such thing as much too soon. That there is only what there is and what we are willing to do for it. I should have fought that fight one more time but there were promises to keep.
So we are jaded, burned so that are skin is tough and thick so we can't feel it when you touch us and you can't feel it when your fingers are pulling something deeper. On the road to meet the cynic without faith desperately seeking something to believe in and hoping that there is a fairy tale even as we laugh at those who can't see anything else.
"I need a cigarette."
Reveling in the vices, the wasted time, pulling the smoke in and exhaling it so that it lingers longer than your breath. You asked me if it ever goes away, this emptiness. If we can ever fill it with something else or do we just have a hole that meanders its way through. I should apologize for this but I don't know who to say the words to.
"I don't like mirrors," you said to me once. "They never reflect what I want to see."
I thought about it now, looking at you, seeing the same clothes from days before. The way your hair fell around your face and everything seemed a little duller. They call us victims but we wielded our own swords. I wanted to say it all to you, to tell you of the constellations and cityscapes that cradle things. To hear what you feel when the nights come and of the joys that you find in these days but you are still looking in the mirror.
"Drown in the disappointment of everything that another year brings and then let’s try to drink our way through it till we are too drunk on the emotion to realize that we have talked ourselves into another year. I will play the music for you and then we can dance like no cares even though we are watching our feet. Let’s color the sky with the crayons of our youth and try to remember when snow was something other than a shroud. Let's think of the white expanse as a canvas."
You smiled at me. "How is it that I can take everything from you but you will stand there and still offer more?"
It is the edge of winter tailing behind it, predictable in the way the cold will wrap us and seep through layers. We are confined now, restrained in the structures of everything we have built to keep busy but there is no freedom when the cold can find all the secrets that you keep.
This city is a shadow of other places you have been and the headlights splash across me like tracer fire in the night, hunting. It is time to start running, they challenge you with how fast your legs will be this time, how sharp the edges. Do you have your own memories that hang from the stars? Do you know the same feeling as the night sky goes clearer when it gets darker earlier? Feel the cold ground entangling your shoes and up your legs, rooting you to the spot so that running is an afterthought.
I will make all my excuses, let my hands traces familiar curves that still hold empty promises of escape. I will watch while you trace my footsteps with your own path but hear nothing but silence along the way. I will let the headlights paint my walls at 4 am and wonder what other places this could be. Our histories are stories of opportunities that stir the imagination even as we prepare for the morning routine.
If I never called you would you show up, would you feel pulled by the same things and make your way to the stone steps of our city. Would your fingers trace the outline of the skyline and make all the memories with a faint smile as if there was nothing but fondness in the things that we don't speak of anymore. I wonder if there are answers somewhere, if this was going to help my cause. Then laughing at myself silently, nothing was going to help my cause. I no longer had a cause. This was leaving me because it was too much too soon, dangling from the minute hands.
You are my secret, my thing that sticks to pages with an intangible tenacity. Random sentences blended with strings and movements that I conduct with my eyes closed. Remember when you used to be everything, the potential almost overwhelming and ambition said that this was the way it was supposed to be. Instead I am sitting here angry, fingers fighting with words that lack the simplest expression. Call me a fool for the faith that I cling to even as you place your weight on the end of the line. Find your mark and let the lights find you, frame you there while you recite the lines with a conviction that beguiles the fantasy.
When did this become about the lacking, about the empty feeling that comes when the calendar starts getting thinner and last until the sun starts baking the brain and killing the feelings. When did it seeing you become everything that I can' stand and then smiling when I realize that it still doesn't matter.
"I'm sorry."
"Me too."
It was under the weight of the resulting silence that this was the part where I should have argued. Should have attempted to stir the embers of the passion that once epitomized our reflections. The moment where I said that you were wrong. I should have said that there is no such thing as much too soon. That there is only what there is and what we are willing to do for it. I should have fought that fight one more time but there were promises to keep.
So we are jaded, burned so that are skin is tough and thick so we can't feel it when you touch us and you can't feel it when your fingers are pulling something deeper. On the road to meet the cynic without faith desperately seeking something to believe in and hoping that there is a fairy tale even as we laugh at those who can't see anything else.
"I need a cigarette."
Reveling in the vices, the wasted time, pulling the smoke in and exhaling it so that it lingers longer than your breath. You asked me if it ever goes away, this emptiness. If we can ever fill it with something else or do we just have a hole that meanders its way through. I should apologize for this but I don't know who to say the words to.
"I don't like mirrors," you said to me once. "They never reflect what I want to see."
I thought about it now, looking at you, seeing the same clothes from days before. The way your hair fell around your face and everything seemed a little duller. They call us victims but we wielded our own swords. I wanted to say it all to you, to tell you of the constellations and cityscapes that cradle things. To hear what you feel when the nights come and of the joys that you find in these days but you are still looking in the mirror.
"Drown in the disappointment of everything that another year brings and then let’s try to drink our way through it till we are too drunk on the emotion to realize that we have talked ourselves into another year. I will play the music for you and then we can dance like no cares even though we are watching our feet. Let’s color the sky with the crayons of our youth and try to remember when snow was something other than a shroud. Let's think of the white expanse as a canvas."
You smiled at me. "How is it that I can take everything from you but you will stand there and still offer more?"