I’ve been going through this thing.
It feels like forever, but
Every day I awake with hope
It’s a weird quirk of the mind, my mind, maybe yours.
This is the day it’s going to go
My way has been interrupted by a parasite
Stinging its bones into my days and nights
Shining through the darkness, like an incessant blinking light
Awake, awake, awake.
Collapsing finally, on the couch, a hollowed
Porcelain doll, my eyes roll back,
Everything slows and
Even with the slightest hush of rest
I awake everyday with hope
Ah, how wholesome, a heart-warming sugary glaze
Wait.
A lump in my throat, in my chest
Too tired to impress, the ropes around my
Chest compress into
A ball of distraction
Disruption in the plans I made
I’ve got this, I’ve got this, I can do it. Me
I don’t need you, I’m self-sustained, unconstrained.
Like a chipped bowl, no longer pristine,
Leave the bygone dish in the cupboard, once unencumbered by pain,
Turn it just so, the bad side to the back, disguise its unsightly flack.
Its flaws must be chiseled off.
Don’t let life’s guests see who you really are
Your broken, tattered, nicked, scratched paint
Only the finest china for show
Only a buffed, shined, glossy daze of reality
Blurred, out of focus. Don’t get too close.
Glasses unbroken. Perfection glows.
Sigh.
I’ve been going through this thing.
You can’t hide the infection, not really.
It grows no matter how much you ignore, crush down, bury it
Doesn’t incinerate but proliferates, the more you hide it,
The more you shew it from the light,
It grows in the darkness, alone in the drapery.
We’re blind to what we don’t want to see.
So are they.
I’ve been going through this thing.
I guess it doesn’t have to be alone.
Sigh.
I awake everyday with hope.
It’s like clicking refresh on Google chrome
Like jumper cables, negative to positive to hope
Turn off, turn on, reboot.
The night goes, the morning shows
A new view
Hold this button and that button together for ten seconds.
Reset. Hello.
Refreshed in mind frame
The architect of my brain must be a magician,
Defeat and depress perform a disappearing act
Everyday
I awake with hope
And the day unfolds.
Air thickens, slithering around my skin tightening the strings, my tendons pulled taut .
It’s too much, it’s too much, the cacophony of
Interruption drones like a platoon of locusts surrounding my skull, unable to disable the volume, sound off, sound off, sound off
The distress call
Me when it’s over.
I’ve been going through this thing
And so have you
Or maybe yours isn’t yet
Or happened in the past
Or will happen
Again.
This, this whole going through things,
We all do.
Yet we prefer to pretend we’re different,
Disconnected from our connection of human existence
But your blood runs just like mine and hers and theirs
Arteries away, veins to the heart.
But every day I awake with hope
I watch your battles and theirs, and I feel hope.
I watch your struggle, yet you’re still there,
Yes, you. Over there in the corner.
Your chest still falls and rises
Like the cliché sun and tides,
Like the stock market, your weight, like mine.
Hope is still showing up
Just like you, and hopefully me,
So I feel hope.
I feel it my fingertips when I touch the petals I grew on my balcony
Across from the dumpsters, across from the concrete boxes and fields,
And the man in the tent,
In front of the window where I watch strangers’ life happen.
Nightfall,
When hope slides under my bedroom door, wandering the apartment floors until morning,
The dark matter takes over again
Slithering and tangling its velvety finger ropes around my optimism
Now entwined with the girl who feels a ghost
It infiltrates me as it’s host.
I laugh at her, me, that girl who had the hope.
The one who thought today was the day of change.
I laugh, I scoff, I pity that diamond-eyed girl
Who thinks she can alter the plan
Yet again
When the morning sun or clouds or rain pour through the always slivered drapes
Plans change and rearrange,
My brain resets its bets
Nothing is set in stone, I say
This isn’t forever, this isn’t forever
It’s just a phase, you see, I tell me,
It will pass as the time
Every day I awake with hope,
Hope that I can heal
And you.
It washes over me,
Like sprinkler-running in the fresh cut grass, blades glued to your toes,
Water drops pirouetting down your cheeks,
Run.
It feels tangy and fresh like the tiny tangerine you tore with your teeth
It’s like seeing a flower for the first time
Can you imagine? Try.
It’s all new and fresh and clean and sheening with unforeseen dreams and possibility.
And then I fall down again
Because I’ve been going through this thing.
This thing keeps going.
But I awake everyday with hope
It’s like that first sip of coffee touching your lips, onto your tongue.
It’s that new day hum, all alive with
I wake up every day with hope
It’s a weird quirk of my mind,
And I’ll take it, it’s mine.
And yours, if you’d like.
