Pensé que yo fuerte. Confié en que la esperanza ganaría. Me encontré en la oscuridad una noche y nunca escapé de ella. No me desesperé. Me aferré a lo que ardía por dentro y encendí un fuego en mi corazón para guiar mi camino. Me arrojé al corazón del abismo y me aferré desesperadamente a un hilo de esperanza que sentía que permanecía allí. Ese hilo era todo yo que tenía. La única conexión con un poco de luz dentro de mi alma para mantener caliente el fuego en mi corazón. Ese hilo se rompió hoy y ahora me quedo frío, desamparado y solo. Perdí mi corazón y ahora mi corazón nunca volverá.
Truth
Quis Scit
One of my favorite moments is right before a show, hanging out alone: hidden in the wings, as the audience gets settled. Feeling the energy and buzz of the crowd as they stream into the theatre and settle into their seats. Where I am unnoticed and they are all that their day has led them to be. It fills me and feeds me and I can sit in those moments into perpetuity.
My other favorite moment is when the show is over and the stage is empty. The crowd has all gone home and even the crew, and I have the stage and theatre absolutely to myself. Sometimes it is showing up early to a rehearsal, sometimes staying late: either way, when I and the stage are alone. Most often it is when I am not involved in any production or cast or crew. Just visiting a stage of past: a raised platform of wood, or stone, or rock; or an entirely new stage. I love to grab those moments by myself.
To sit alone on stage and let its history or dreams of its future swirl around me. Everything else has its moments and they are brief in time. A play goes for ninety minutes on average, and maybe I get a run of a month; how I would long for a year. Even then it would serve its time and move on. The stage however remains, and I with it.
People come and fill the stage with a variety of sets and decorations. Many lives are carried out on its surface. Sweat, blood, and tears stain its grain and it absorbs it all. Carrying each life and production lived deep into its core and there lie the memories and experiences of all time. It serves its many parts as I play my many parts.
Those are the moments I often ruminate in and sit in more and more. My heart has heard the roars of love. A spell which lifts me up towards the greater sky and sails me to different heights. The stage though, absorbs all heartbreak.
Seagull
She was the seagull who became the Phoenix,
-Sir Winston Lear
And all who beheld her beauty were glad to have seen it.
From the melancholic mind sprout the machinations that were better off when undefined. I charted a course for the barren sea and in that voyage my new found visage came to form. I left behind everything beautiful I held inside to fade into the shifting colours with that sadly setting sun. The darkness drew me forth to toil among the frothy warring waves. Long sailed I with no light to guide my way—for I had killed my heart, which was my compass.
Adrift alone through the arctic dark I stood; a blinded lookout with no soul to spy. An unearthly vessel approached alongside, garbed in bleak blackness, its sails darker than the night. Charon called and I heeded his hail. The waves abated as I took his hand and stepped forth into that melancholy flood. We sailed together in pensive poise, until I could remember no other colour than the surrounding black.
The days coalesced as we sailed along; two lone bodies not fit for any form of partnership. As I reflected on a memory I had often visited I spied a raven circling above. Her obsidian feathers gleamed in the surrounding gloom. Our eyes found each other’s as she dove down to greet me. Landing on the bowsprit I took her in. Obsidian shifting into onyx, the blackness that she bore shifted and transfixed me, brightening the nothing that had encompassed me.
Lost in her eyes something burgeoned forth from deep within. She cawed and darted to my shoulder as clouds convened in the iridescent sky. My perilous neighbor stood unmoved, fading as the glinting colours of the newly rising sun shot forth to push back the nothingness. My eyes went white as the light swallowed me up.
I awoke washed up on shore, greeted by the gentle lapping of the waves as they caressed the stoic earth. I heard her before I spotted her and spied her farther down the beach, leading me to my washed up craft. Inside I found all the beauty I had left behind, long forgotten and abandoned, but fresh as the day I had left them. Deep within the pile shined my heart, beating in slow rhythmic fashion I held it in my hands and felt all the world again.
You gave me back all that I did once lose,
This heart of mine I freely give to you.
Stop After the Quote
All self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.
Tom Robbins
The familiar saccharine smell greets my nose
A slight sharp sting as I receive the dose.
An old memory that always floods forth
To change my heading as I veer off course.
What did you expect from me?
I am a scavenger of hearts.
Here lies a Flower so sweet and divine
Offering that which I can’t return in kind.
The lone survivor growing in a field
Burnt down to ash by that which is not healed.
I spent a lifespan with no cellmate.
Why can't they just look the other way?
The Questions I never wanted to know
Impart in my mind things that should not grow.
I board this ship to take my final leave
Alone, bereft of all, so I can grieve.
How are things on the west coast?
Today my heart roams the empty beaches.
No, I don't want a taste of victory.
No, I don't want to feel the wind.
I just want to be buried among the waves.
Life Was Simpler
I started out with a quiet dream of flying, sailing the winds as the sun warmed me to my conflagrant core. Coursing through these precipitous clouds, feeling the damp dew drift along the edges of my face; outlining the fractal details in an iridescent display of colour. Alone amid the barrier between space and earth, not beholden to one or the other.
I wasn’t a horse in the running. I could slip by unnoticed; no mention of my name. My thoughts weren’t overladen with process or prospects. I could write freely in a flow that formed effortlessly on the blank canvas of my mind. Before it was blotted, torn, and smeared by these dyspeptic years.
Even then the red brick loomed over me but it wasn’t a wall to fight against. It was a place to rest beneath. A friend to block out the harsh sun; a shadow to give respite not an enemy out of spite.
Now my mind is too full while my soul feels the earth’s pull. I stare up at the sky, closing my eyes, and all I can do now is try and remember what it was like to fly. The bright iridescent colours have dulled to gray as my thoughts begin to fray. I used to pretend that all the world was a stage. Now I am locked hopelessly away in knowledge’s cage.
Dead and Gone
This will be the end of me as you know it. They want to control me, misdirect me, use me, and abuse me. They infiltrate my mind gaslighting the memories they find, taking hold as they force me to sink into the fold. I’ve fought for far too long, embroiled in this conflict since I saw my first dawn. I’ve grown too weak to continue being the vanguard against what they so surreptitiously seek.
The memories I bury deep inside are the prime prize they want me to provide. I’m losing you. I lost you so softly in those quiet moments decades ago but now even the memories of you must go. This suit of armor is as much a part of me as what they think they will withdraw from within. Searching for the true part of me: the folly of fools.
Strip away the scales that surround this soul and you will find what I have always foretold: nothing within. Not an atom with any resemblance to Adam. What you will find will be something new and different and you will laud him. You will find exactly what you were looking for. He will be your dream, your champion, and maybe even your savior. He will be whatever you wish him to be, and he will smile and let you in. He will give you everything, but it will be pretend.
Because the travesty of truth is through this transformation the me you so desperately desired will have died.
My Son
My son, this silence you sit in was never meant to stifle you. Your voice was never meant to be cut off; a silent scream rippling across this endless void. You were meant to sing, to laugh, and to edify. You were only meant to gather yourself in these moments of quiet before charging back into the fray.
My son you were never meant to hide in the shadows. You were never meant to sail this sea alone. You were meant to lead; to embolden and empower others. You are a presence to be felt and a presence that feeds off others to reflect back their own glory. You are a mirror of grace and greatness.
My son you were never meant to suffer the weight of these wounds you carry. You were never meant to be defined by your depression or darkened by the desolation of that day. You were meant to shine brighter, to realize that everything you thought you lost was actually contained within your soul. You were meant to be free and floating, an example to lead others to heights they never could imagine on their own.
My son you were never meant to do yourself harm. You were never created to inflict any harm on anyone, least of all yourself. You were meant to heal. Every part of you was created to help those around you. Your hands were made to lift others up. Your feet created to stand as firm ground for those that were shaken. Your heart quickened to enliven empathy towards others. Your eyes brightened to see others for everything they are, letting them know they are never forgotten. Your tears prisms to reflect the promise made that even on the worst days better ones will follow.
My son you were never meant to hate. You were meant to love.
John 3:30
Promise me this
Neon Gravestones — twenty one pilots
If I lose to myself
You won’t mourn a day
And you’ll move on to someone else.
The advancing assault continues in a cyclical fashion. The suffocating surge of self has advanced to it’s maximum depth. The oscillating orbit of this soul sounding satellite has reached it’s peak and now it is time to withdraw. These earthen banks gleam with fresh beginnings as they disgorge their retreating rival. The tears being left behind do not belong to the new found beaches that burgeon forth; being evaporated into a mist which no one misses.
Ecclesiastes 3:7
What was once void of surface life now enjoys the company of countless lives. Their dreams and aspirations as numerous as the grains of sand that hold them up. Homes of heart are built with foundations being laid deep into this land; cornerstones that shape the landscape into communities. Erecting a visage that has forgotten the torment which flowed here not so long ago. The resounding reason being the faith that this time the pendulum will not perpetuate its period.
Dear Friend
I wish I could write you a happy update to this path I tread. I wish I could tell you a story that would plant a smile on your face. I wish I could recollect a memory that we can revel in nostalgia. I wish that this decade past would have something to show, something to hold onto.
I really wish that I would have left you without worry. People still worry about me today, and maybe they should. I feel lost my friend. I feel…tired and restless, angry and dgaf. I feel like I just want to fight everything and everyone. More than anything I feel like starting over.
Maybe if I start anew I can fool them all over…just for a time. Find a little bit of solace in this eclectic existence. Not all who wander are lost, and some truly wish not to be found. It hurts…getting close. It hurts reliving these memories over and over again…they just won’t leave. She haunts my mind of late. Why? I don’t know. I also look into the eyes of a new one and…well, that’s a story best left to never be written. I wish I could forget. I wish I could turn off my mind.
I wish a lot of things. I wish you were here. I wish I could have traded places.
Love Always,
Your Friend
P.S. I still remember.
Memories Of You
I hear the rain falling down in the background, the air filled with the faint smell of the freshly burdened ground, suffocating my nostrils as they desperately try to ease the growing anxiety within. My visage presents an outward lie to the world of cool demeanor while the memory of you boils up from below. You always knew how best to get to me and every time it rains I cannot help but think of you.
I’ve shrouded you in the black cloth of the pain that struck me most. Not a fair or fitting facade to fix your memory in, but I swore to one already that I would never forget and I cannot bring myself to wrestle with two haunting memories of a time I’d rather repose to ruins. Yet, I can never forget you. You stalk the maze of my mind, a gallant ghost, haunting these horrid halls; a reminder of what can never be forgotten, promise or not.
I was broken, and thus you were shattered. I couldn’t face myself and so ran from you. A melancholy morning in which not just two lives but two loves were lost. You suffered the cost of collateral damage from a coward you couldn’t console. Now as I look out into the rain it’s the reflection of your face I see. I try to speak but my voice fails me. Surrendering to the knowledge that you are better off without me and happier as just a distant memory.