I just wish that for once,
you'd be weak.
Instead of numb,
That you would descend into the foggy caverns of your need
And grapple with your hunger,
Face it, name it,
No longer hide behind the circular sound or crumpled up pages,
scratching aimlessly at your temples,
and bleeding Cabernet.
That you would carry its broken consequences to the precipice of my skin
And let me reach into you
Star struck, wide eyed,
with whatever homebound magic remains left in me, and
Again resemble the fickle girl
that fell in love with you.
A mask that allows me to stay,
Together we would stay, held,
or-
I would stay-
Within the cold, embraced,
Under the unforgiving pavement.
It is dark
and we are not light.
But you are familiar, stable,
I blanket myself in this consistency.
Armed against my unintentional and imminently hollow soul.
I dance with the devil.
Convince myself that I am safe.
Bargain my dignity for a crumbling and fragmented
poor excuse for a
match,
You light the spark.
I am not illuminated,
I can not see.
I am not light, not lovely, not bright,
You are not seen,
But you are deeply aglow.
Subtle.
So that maybe you would not know
Or need to
How desperately
I crave the caress of your poison
the hearth of your shackles .
How automatically
and voluntarily
I reach in your direction,
Abandon integrity
And charge toward
my own demise,
An unconscious ideology of heroism.
Choosing to put
the storm before the calm.
I repeat anxiety
Then awoken by unprecedented flags.
In the heaviest hail, the thickest whiplash,
I bow my head to the shame,
to the longevity of my prophetic and burning heart.
You retreat,
I am swallowed in my vacancy.
The smoke lingers in the dead air,
the settling ash collects upon my open palms,
dirtying my grapple for life
like water running through my guilty fingers,
That I plead, beg,
check every box
Until I am defeated,
I cannot reach, and
I won,
And you wave the white flag for me.
But
I did not fight a good fight.
I am caught
with skin still in the game,
between what I want
what I need
and what I deserve.
So yet again
I surrender,
Open palms.
I succumb to the pull of the tides,
Hold my breath, cover my face,
Reach toward the compelling evidence of my soul on the ocean floor.
A white flag dances atop a lighthouse.
You are that lighthouse. You are
that island, my vessel,
and the waves.
You are guiding me, saving me, delivering me, and killing me.
So with open palms
I lay down my armor,
my Rorschach camouflage,
and stand bare and tall
through what I know I don't know.
I trace the edge of infinity's shore
With the frayed edge of the white flag
that once traced your skin.
There are more than two sides to every story--
I know it now,
Maybe you would say that I have seen the light.
I am not done reaching yet.
