constructing loses its appeal when destruction is inevitable and it's by someone else's hand. i feel my heart beating in my stomach and fingertips and throat and it matches the ticking of the clock that seems to follow me around everywhere i go. the number of seconds, minutes, and hours spent melting into myself outweighs everything else i've ever done in all of my time wasting away on this planet. there is so much energy building inside of me that i could explode upon contact with anyone i love, and there is nothing that would feel better. i've been waiting in line for so long now. i'm tugging on your sleeve, asking, "are we there yet?"

but the answer is always "no."

once upon a time we tried to build bridges, eyes refusing to meet as we constructed arches out of steel and resentment. and then came the day when we burned those bridges that we had crafted with stiff fingers and we watched the flames devour the metal, the explosive glow reflected in the glassiness of our eyes. i watched our creation burn to the ground. we heard the crackling of the embers and tasted the ashes on our tongues when we opened our mouths to gasp for air blackened by the heat. i felt as though my insides were boiling when the wind blew away the soot and the land was flat and clear. i saw the same nothingness that had stopped fueling the fire between you and me. a sight to behold, a site to behold. just when the sky was flooded with inky-black and scattered with stars, i could feel my pulse quicken and my fingers uncurl. when i turned around, you grabbed my shoulders and reminded me why i never became anchorless. with you or without you, there is still a fight and i refuse to surrender myself to a dream; there is a reality that only we understand, so we will pick up the twisted steel and bolts and, side-by-side, assemble a new bridge and never again turn our heads.

remembering may be worse than forgetting, remembering the sleepless nights and the subtleties in your words. i was always brash and unyieldingly honest about how much i liked you. i remember being guiltily apologetic for the way i would talk to you, desperately craving the embarrassment that should have accompanied my horribly flirtatious behavior. this was a time when you were calm and put on a relaxed front even when a storm was brewing in your body and mind. i never knew what you were thinking, i loved the puzzle. you never lost the mystery, but i stopped feeling like a detective once you finally caved. and now years have passed, everything is different, my feelings have slooooowly dissipated, but it aches to remember the way things once were. parts of you are never leaving my heart, no matter how much time slips through my fingers. if it takes more to forget, i will do it. i will crawl away on hands that are burnt from bad dreams and never look back.

i am trying, i am trying to forget.

some of us need constant validation, constant reassurance. we want it from our friends, our family, our teachers, the strangers hurrying along the streets with their hands shoved into the pockets of their expensive coats. we need to know we're the best artist, the best singer, the best writer, the best friend, the best looking, the best fuck that anyone's ever had. and we spend years honing these crafts, placing hope and desire and faith into things and thinking maybe we'll get somewhere, maybe we're more talented than we lead ourselves to believe. and then one day it hits you and you learn that you're not good at any of these things, you were never talented, you'll never be better or the best or even mediocre at things you wanted more than anything else.

stop wasting you time on god. there is nothing to believe in.

let's rip each other apart and will ourselves to force grins with teeth clenching down and grinding themselves into dust, smiling for the cameras with faces turned in opposite directions. hold it against me if that's how you roll but nothing will hurt you more than my hands tracing circles on your stomach, tugging at your insides when nobody else was around to puppeteer your strings. you loved the extent of my worries and cares and basked in the glow while slinking away, leaving me dry and crumpled helplessly at your side, begging to be forgiven for the sins that i never committed. the extent of your wanting was based purely on neglect, and the thrill was enough to give you the ammunition to find me when i was cowering like an animal, begging for company that was begrudgingly offered to me as my temporary fix. just like an addict, craving the next hit. the words in your sentences will never be more than jumbles of letters in languages that you don't even understand. i was never out to get you. i was never a sinner.

stop preaching, start listening.

i am digging my own grave, one foot at a time
and i'm sinking faster than i crawl
where i sleep is where i lay my head and sink every night
beds made of quicksand
restless sleep that startles me awake and burns my eyes,
blurred with exhaustion and red-rimmed.

"you have it all" is the catchphrase,
chanted somnolently in a haunting resonance.
i open my mouth to shout back, desperately seeking their philosophies,
willing them to become my own.
and would i prefer to stumble in a daze, delightedly obtuse?
could such ignorance leave me crumpled contentedly at my own feet,
muscles softened against bones, powerless and common?

what am i waiting for? a flash of blinding light that makes my head spin, something that awes me? when you denounce god, you have no one to hate but yourself. and i would still rather despise my weaknesses than lose my soul to a god that paints in black and white.

i am so goddamn lonely sometimes. the world is out to get me and never stops searching for weak souls to feed on while the people hide in their beds, and i trip along the streets looking for hands to hold, trying not to get tangled up in my own bruised legs. under rocks, between walls, the wrong time, the wrong place, always the wrong situation haunting me as the seconds fly by, tick tick tick. your words of reassurance never fail to reassure me that i am hell bound and hellbent and raising hell in my stomach and eyes and brain and dragging it with me thrown over my shoulder like a huntress with fresh kill. what i wouldn't give to face reality and turn my back to the flickering 8mm film screening behind my eyelids, constantly repeating and replaying and relaying messages that were never even meant to be heard in the first place. take me home, hold my hand, make me forget anything ever happened.

i'm ready to be reborn.