Suburban Sand Dunes

The sun sets and sight takes over. 
Houses are shrouded in darkness. 
Peaks of roofs touch the sky, suburban sand dunes. 
Dark windows blend into the black and make me think of far away places and of home at the same time. 
Distance, far from here, that I could find with you and homes that you and I could choose. 
All of this beneath a moon that looks down on us in different cities and smiles as we close our eyes to fall asleep, thinking of each other.

Voices In My Head

There are voices in my head all the time. 

Some of them are kind.  Voices of parents and teachers and loved ones telling me I’m beautiful and smart and worth every good thing I have and more.  Voices that encourage and strengthen and commend. 

Some of them are my own, constantly repeating things that have happened to me.  Blissful things and terrifying things and devastating things.  Things I wish had happened, things I wish someone had said to me, things I wish I’d said. 

There are voices from my friends, telling me that I matter and they care about me.  Promising to stick around.  There are voices from some of those same people tearing me down and belittling me and ripping me apart with their words.  There are voices and words spoken when they thought me out of earshot. 

There are voices of characters I’ve created, telling me their stories and urging me to change their fates.  Challenging me and pushing boundaries and melding old ideas with new. 

And then there are the voices that don’t belong to a body, the voices that my head itself makes up.  Voices that have no foundation in reality.  Voices that my sick mind has made up just to torture me.  Voices that call me worthless and awkward and useless.  Voices that tell me to read into conversations and see that I’m not welcome.  Voices that tell me that I’ve made too many mistakes to turn back now, and that nothing I can do will ever be enough for anyone.  Voices that tell me I imagined every friendship I ever had.  Voices that tell me no one wanted me to begin with and that I am an imposition on the people around me.  There are voices in my head that pull me down with no prompting from the world, and I can only fight them with so much.  I tell them to stop.  I push them out.  I scream for them to end.  I sob and rock and cry until I gag, begging these voices made up in my mind to stop hurting me, to stop telling me the lies.  Because they are lies, that much I know.  But something about them is so real.  Something about them is so hard to fight.  I fight them every day with varying degrees of success.  I can tell them to stop and they listen, sometimes.  Sometimes, it’s a compromise and I drive around the parking lot but they’re still too loud to let me go inside because they tell me I have no place in there.  But sometimes, it’s been a rough day, and the sun sets, and the voices come on so strong and so hard and so loud that all I can do is succumb to their words and drown in the waves of tears that wash over the edges of my eyes and choke out pleading words until I dissolve into sleep.

Unmasked

You unmask me and I am no longer afraid.
I let my secret spill freely from my lips and I give you sad smiles when I tell you of all I've lost.
You hold my gaze and watch me, quiet, as I tell you of all the ways this world has broken me and you never look away.
Around you, perhaps because of you, I am not ashamed of my past or my broken, jagged pieces.
I am not ashamed of my fears or my doubts and I let the tears come because with you, I am not ashamed of them either.
With you, it's easy to be myself.
I don't have to put on a good face, and I can be happy or heartbroken or giddy or devastated and you support me equally in each case.
You unmask me, and I thought I would be afraid to show you who I am, but I'm not afraid at all.
I am strong and brave and fearless now, because of you, around you.
And I know that when the world comes crashing in, you will hold my hand and I will not be ashamed because you are the face I do not have to hide from.

Run Away

I want to run away.
I want to run through the countryside of a foreign country and lay in the grass and stare at the sky.
I want to laugh until I can't breathe and hold your hand, away from all of this.
I want to say your name quietly underneath the stars, and loudly from the top of a waterfall.
I want to leave this place and never look back.
I want my future to be in maps and hotels and new places.
I want my plans to be in new languages and unseen faces and in your eyes.
I want a plane ticket and a bag and my passport and you.
I want to run away from here, just the two of us until we forget our past.
I want to make up new identities and be new, and untouched by the past we both want to run from.
I want to climb mountains and buy books and sit on beaches that I've never been to before.
I want to exist in new time zones and breathe new air.
I want to run away from here with you, and I know you want to run away too.