I'm older now.

I’m older now and I know not to crush all those around me; being sad is not a rite of passage, nor does it have to come hand in hand with destruction. Being sad can be a quiet thing, a blink in the dark, being sad can be a whisper – I’m older now, I can hear it without response. I’m older now; I know that love is sacred. It is. It’s small, too, and fragile, and doesn’t last forever. It ebbs and flows, a forceful and retreating tide. I’m older now; I know not to run when the swells alarm me. Time mends, I wait, for my heart beat to slow. I know that it’s okay to take time, to catch my breath, to reassess. Acting on the anxious adrenalin is like a moth drawn to a lamp, both entranced and trapped, faithful to the pursuit of doom, disguised as a righteous path. I’m older now, I know when I’m wrong – when I’m being childish, when I’m being hurtful, stubborn, rude. I know when it’s my mind that’s wrong, the dark thoughts that warp and twist, taking any sideways glance and turning into a despising glare, I know the difference between anxiety and reality. Most of the time, at least. I used to find something in everyone, to be insanely jealous of. How lucky they all seem, the beautiful people, without a worry or glimpse of stress let alone depression. I’m older now, I know that everyone has their battles – none greater or smaller than others. We cant pick our battles, but we can learn how to fight – cliché, perhaps, but I’m older now; I have no qualms in putting my faith in phrases or poems - there’s safety in their consistency. A book never changes, words locked in print like a landlocked country. Living in a mental state of constant flux, I’ve found what I need to ground me. Patti Smith. Anais Nin. Dylan Thomas. Bukowski. Vali Myers. Ginsberg. Battling mental health issues is not a fatal flaw, but a learned skill – I’m older now, I know not to despise the way anxiety seeks to trap me, but appreciate the beauty of my mind as it fights it.

Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; 
Though lovers be lost love shall not; 
And death shall have no dominion.
- Dylan Thomas

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

-Anais Nin

Remember, you promised me
I'm dying, I'm dying, please
I want to, I need to be
Under your skin

~~~~~~~

I can taste

Last winter on my teeth

(tobacco phlegm

and something sweet)

I’m coming to terms with the fact

That I’ll always be in two places at once.

My here and now is never fully right here, right now.

Like a phantom limb, I feel you crawling under my skin-

Hands balled into fists, muscles in fits

Spasms and contractions and half moon

Nail marks brand my palm and

Now I’m calm.

Sour tongues licking salty sweat

I die a thousand little deaths

Eyelashes glued with sleep, knuckle deep

My body is both soft and hard

Soft and hard

I can hear

The answers

To those questions whispered

Between our limbs, kissed

Onto eyelids and thin

Skinned

Extremities. Answer me-

You love me as if I’ll forget.

All I do

Is remember.

almost

The truth is

happiness feels chemical and sadness feels dull, and the in-betweens feel like a doctor’s waiting room. The high is a five hundred dollar shopping spree and the low is a bathtub of quickly cooling soapy water that stings my eyes. If you asked me who my first love was I couldn’t tell you, because every one feels like the first and they all feel the same, love is the same wherever you feel it. Friends are like limbs. Or skin cells. Sometimes I look at my face and imagine the skin to be gone, just cartilage and bone and fat deposits and whatever else is under there, because it’s all there all the time after all. Friends are like trampolines. Lovers are like barbecues. I’ve always wanted to have a reoccurring dream, like they do in movies, and be a tortured but creative individual, waking in the night and calling their ex to say sorry about a thing that happened in the past that the latter has probably forgotten and the former will never forget. Regret. Six years have passed, can you believe it? I’m in love with the way skin looks in moonlight, pale and almost blue, almost two dimensional, almost real, almost mine. The truth is, I don’t really know how to be a real person, how to look after a house, how to save money or plan for the future or see things from a greater perspective than the magnified importance I give to those issues so small in hindsight but so intoxicatingly large in the present. Sometimes I feel trapped in a fleeting moment that was never designed to linger, but something within me has slammed down the breaks and I hover in that moment for eternity, or so it feels, until I turn everything rotten. I’m trapped in a late September morning, holding my shoes, dusty soles skipping cracks in the pavement thinking about sadness and being saddened by thinking, falling in love again and not wanting to because resisting is safer, leaving is easier. The truth is I don’t know how to turn any of this into poetry.