heartbreak

THAT TIME I DECIDED UPON DELUSIONS INSTEAD FOR THE STORY, AT LEAST, FOR THE UNIVERSE

We smoked the screen to make it what it was to be. Now to know it in my memory… – Bon Iver

I should have just stayed away.

I knew it too. All along. That’s the worst, isn’t it? When you feel something so viscerally in your bones you can’t quite explain it or directly point to it but, it’s there. Like a ghost in your mind, haunting you as it floats back and forth, in and out. But no, it can’t be. No he must. No she isn’t. And so it begins, the lies we tell ourselves to keep the loves we want.

Of all of the terrible things in this world, at this moment, I feel as though hindsight is the most terrible. It rips away your self-pity, rips away the distractions you’ve piled high around yourself, rips away the shaky foundation you’re trying to stand tall on, and it says in its cruelest of voices, “Look, you tiny idiot. Look, you beautiful little fool. It was there all along. Right in front of your face.”

But, we smoke our screens. We cloud our glasses. We live in and out of our delusions because for the moment they are more beautiful than the truth. We forget all of the time that we craft our own realities, and life is never kind when our experiences are proven to be just that…our reality, our experience. Not the reality, not the true experience.

And from that moment forward, you can see nothing as the same. The jig is up, the fantasy ruined, the veil ripped, and all you are left to do is look. Over, and over, and over. Because what is passion without torture? Look at the text(s) that said it all. Look at the mouth that told explanations that raised your eyebrow. Look at the shoes you wore the last time you slept, beside them, soundly in your own ignorance. Look at your vacant eyes in the mirror and sigh at your pathetic reflection. Look at those moments, lies though they were, when you had a love in your arms. On your mouth. In your head. In your bones. At least. At least. At least.

Oh, the excuses, rationality, and delusions we cast upon our eyes, our hearts, our minds when we feel what we perceive to be love. Woe to the intense folk, the sensitive folk, the trusting folk, the hopeful folk. Woe always, forever and ever, for the lambs amongst the lions amongst the lambs.

And the most woe upon the little lamb that thought herself a lion as she ventured into the den, unafraid and willing and wanting.

MEMO RE: A CAFFEINATED SPARK

Subways and crashing waves and cicadas were the soundtrack

To nights spent under trees and stars and skyscrapers

Where cold hands clutched colder hands

And Instagrammed memories seared onto my soul.

He guided me away from past associations

And led me back to my wild heart

Yet through it all we remained unable to attain

A full sense of each other as one.

And so it went

Ripped apart, a holy day,

Then loose ends tied back together.

Ancient paths lay between us and

Fate’s strings led our swift birth and slow death as

We were created to destroy

Old ties and birth new beginnings and

To take one another to grand heights and new lows.

And though it is true that now

My heart is with another, his arms around one too

I still wonder if I will ever lose this taste

Of my mouth wondering why covenants cannot be broken.