Shards and Secrets

My secrets are shards of metal, collecting in my chest.
The edges are jagged and sharp.
They slice away at me with every breath.
You're like a magnet, one look and they come to you.
They're drawn to the surface with a single look from your face.
I can't keep them in.
They shred my throat as I try to swallow them down.
They tear away at my inner cheeks as they spill out of my mouth.
The blood pools red beneath us as you ask and the shards fall out in answer.
Telling you my stories is tearing me apart.
But I knew they would end me, and better they kill me quickly while they spill than kill me slowly while they settle in my heart.

Fractions

There are an infinite number of halves in any whole.

They just keep going until the pieces are too small to see and the denominators are too big to fathom.

I seem to give my heart away in fractions like that; in halves.

Losing just as much each time, left with less and less.

The first half of my whole heart went to a boy I met at sixteen.  

He still has that massive piece of my heart in his hand, and from time to time he likes to pull the strings and watch me dance.

I was left with half of myself to protect, but I just kept giving it away.

Half of that half went to the friends I left behind.

And I was left with a fourth of the whole I started with.

Half of that fourth went with to the friends who left me.

And I was left with such a small piece, I thought nothing would ever hurt again.

Until half of that piece walked away with blue eyes that still make me cry.

And here I am, left with the halves of halves that no one wanted.  

That no one bothered to take.

The fraction of me that is left is too small to fill the void in my chest.

The sinews of my heart are worn thin and stretched too far out and I fear the pain, like the halves, is destined to go on into infinity with me.

Burning

My bones are burning, I swear.
And my heart is full of ice.
I fall between the valley of numb and high of much too much alive.
My hands shake with unresolved feeling.
My brain is null and void.
I stare and shudder and try to forget and remember all the more.
My stomach turns, I might be sick.
My head feels full of air.
I count down from eight, too many times, but every time you're there.

Just Talking

I could try to write really beautiful words about how things are going for me right now, but my heart is just too tired.  I just need to talk.  Or type.  Whatever.  Graduation is coming up, right around the corner and real life is staring me in the face.  It's completely terrifying to be honest.  I've wanted to graduate for so long but now that it's here, it's pretty scary.
And someone I care about is hurting right now.  It hurts me to see him going through something like that.  I was scared he would do something stupid (don't worry, he's fine) and it sent me on an emotional tumble down memory lane.
I keep falling into complicated relationships and friendships with people who are emotionally unstable.  I don't mind.  I like to fix things, and when I'm surrounded by broken people I can distract myself from my own problems.  That's the trouble though, isn't it?  That I have my own issues.  My own frailties.  My own tragedies.  As much as I want to fix everyone else, as much as I want to save them, they always take me down with them in the end.
I don't remember the last time I trusted someone.  And I don't remember the last time I didn't feel like I was drowning in loneliness and despair.  I can come up for air for a while, and I'm pretty good at faking it but these last few days have been a mess.  I can't stop crying and I just want to be alone.  But the thing is, being alone only makes things worse.  It makes it easier to cry and harder to open up.  What I need to do is push through and pretend to be happy again so maybe I can fool myself into believing it for a while.  But I just can't.  My whole body feels tired and I just can't muster up the strength to fake it right now.  Maybe in a few days, maybe next week. Maybe never.  I don't know.  I just don't want to fake it anymore.  I want to actually be happy.  I want to actually trust people.  I want to have a list of friends that isn't only two people long.  And I want my heart to stop aching in my chest.
And most of all, right now, I just want someone to listen.  So thank you, to the lost person who stumbled across my blog.  Thank you to whoever slows down to read this.  Thank you for being someone I can talk to without having to see your face.

Waves

I can go days without thinking of the things that broke me.
Smiles come easy and the moments linger long and slow and sweet like honey on my lips.
The sun comes up, and I have this feeling that it's shining just for me, just to show me the world.\
Laughter bubbles up from some place within me, unbidden and easy and free.
It's a place I wish that I could stay in.

In seconds, it comes crashing down.
One word, one face, one thought, and it all falls apart like a card house blown to bits.
The memories suffocate me and settle in my lungs; tar, sticking to everything and blocking out the air.
The world falls away like ash scattered in a breeze and all I can see is the blur of unshed tears.
I refuse to cry there, anywhere.
I refuse to cry at all.
The losses form a lump in my throat until swallowing feels suspiciously like sobbing and breathing is too close to gasping for life.
I hold it down, try to drown it in the latent anger that died out long ago.
Instead, I throw pain into the all consuming grief and the feeling grows, swelling in my chest until I have to close my eyes to keep the waves inside.
I fall for days at a time, stuck beneath a tide of loss that I can't find my way out of.
I simply have to float until the waves slow down and the water recedes, leaving me heaving on a desolate, numb strip of reality.

Highway Highs

I drove down the highway laughing today.
I turned the radio up and rolled my window down until it felt like my body was soaring the same way my soul was.
As the wind blew in, the tension in my chest blew out and I could finally breathe again.
It was like the world was laughing with me, the very essence of nature echoing the joy in my very bones.
I could've driven off like that into the sunset and never looked back.
I would have if my roots here weren't so deep.
I still might one day, when there's no one waiting for me at home and there's no responsibility beckoning me back.
The feeling followed me inside, even after the wind was gone and the music had stopped.
It swirls within my heart now, light, bursting with energy and enthusiasm.
I feel like a little girl, reckless and free in the brightest and most honest sense, spinning in glittering rays of sunshine and full of the innocent, naive hope that the sun will never go down.

This Isn't Mad

Mad isn't the word I'd use to describe this hollow ache in my chest.
I've been mad before, quite often in fact.
Mad is white hot, hit before you think, blind.
This is much worse than that.
I wish I was mad, I wish I could cry and rage and scream and it'd be over.
I don't know what to do with this.
This confusion that pounds in my head.
This hurt that squeezes my heart and wets my eyes.
This missing that settles in my chest like rocks and weighs me down.
This feeling that I was all made up of you until you left.
Now, I can't breathe without filling up my lungs with unanswered questions.
I blink away stinging tears triggered by a single word, a single song.
I go on existing, afraid to live, afraid to move for fear that you might come back and I'll miss my chance again.

Morphine Melody

Unsaid words well up and sting my eyes.
I just want to forget.

I start the steady morphine melody drip,
one note at a time,
one song sustaining my heartbeat.

The pain is there, the twist in my heart.
The tug of phantom pain on my hand that itches for you.

Sometimes a line blurs it all out.
A handful of words that slip into my bloodstream and put me to sleep.
And sometimes, it lets me forget.

Sometimes the drug doesn't work,
It just paints the pain in vibrant colors.
But I let it pierce my ear and then my mind and last my heart,
drowning in the sound of forgetting you.
Without ever forgetting you at all.

Almost Midnight

It's almost midnight and I'm choking on how much I hate you.
It's clawing its way up my throat, screaming to be set free.
It's burning everything away from the inside out.
It's filling up my lungs like tar, clogging them and suffocating me.
All I can hear are the lies, all I see is your smile and the hiding daggers in your eyes.
It's almost midnight and I can't breathe because of you,
because of all you've done to me.
The way you broke me, the way you lied, the way you got my hopes up.
It's taking up too much space and I can't think straight anymore.
It's almost midnight and I can't help but hate you for who you turned out to be.

Hunger (from October daily prompt)

Desire gnaws at me like hunger.
It's painful.  Unavoidable.  Persistent.  Deadly.
It wrenches my stomach and pounds against my head.
It makes me dizzy.  It makes me sick.
It's far beyond the mild craving I once felt; the one I could live without.  This, however, is nothing like that.  That craving was uncomfortable, but it would pass.  All I had to do was wait the feeling out.  But I waited out too many cravings and now I need it.
It's no longer uncomfortable but achingly necessary.  I can feel the weakness and fatigue settling into my bones.  Without you, I can only go on for so long before I start falling apart.
The twinge in my chest is all consuming, threatening my existence.  It'll start there; the failure of my vital organs.
First my heart that broke will give out for good.
Then my voice that cried for you for too long.
Next my eyes, over dried, long run out of tears will fail me.
Last the hands that've been too far from yours for too long.
All that is left is a shattered, paper-mache skeleton, fragile and empty because you starved me out of myself.

Unfair

The people who broke us are the ones we crave when the wounds they gave us ache.

The ones who leave don't bare the scars from the fight.  And it's always the one who gets hurt that ends up dying.

We get left alone, and we hurt, and we cry, and we have problems for the rest of our life.

And they just leave.
And they're just fine without us.

It's not fair that my broken heart aches for the dozens of people who tore it apart and it's not fair that they aren't around anymore to help pick up the pieces.

Broken Fortress

I was a fortress, bracing for a coming storm.

You came in and wrecked the walls around me.

You broke down every wall before you walked out,

and left me stranded, fighting a raging storm alone.

Here I am, a storm around me and a sea I didn't know about,

 washing in from outside.

I'm drowning.

A girl wrecked by blue eyes and a couple of words,

no fortress to protect me from the pain I knew was coming.

Sick Sights

It's been almost seven months now, since I burned that bridge.  I knew it would be hard but I thought I'd be over it by now.
I knew it was coming, the dreaded sighting.  At the store, on the road, somewhere, somehow, I knew I'd see you all around.
I knew it was coming, I don't know how.  It was that sixth sense, I guess, that we all have.  You say someones name and they walk around the corner.  For me, it was a plaguing paranoia that came from out of the blue.
My head snapped around too fast when I saw your car.  It was too obvious.  It was too dramatic.  It was involuntary and unstoppable.
After all this time, I still had a sickeningly visceral, physical reaction.
I felt like I was going to be sick.  I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach.  I couldn't breathe.  I dare say a tear fell.  All of it, at once, unannounced, unbecoming, unwanted, unwarranted.
Seven months and it still hurts.  The fake apologies.  The lies.  The excuses.

After seven months, time still gets to me.  It whispers in my ear and makes me doubt myself.  It pushes me into dark, lonely places at night.  It makes me want to reach out, to say it was my fault.

I won't.  It wasn't, not entirely at least.  But it still hurts.  And I wonder if it will ever stop or if I'll have to live in this town praying not to see any of you for the rest of my life.

Lacking Eloquence

I tried to write something eloquent.  I tried to make the simple complex.  I tried to make the ugly beautiful.  And still I stare at an empty page while I drown in emotion.

Do I write of the pain?  How I sat there tonight and for the first time, you didn't fall in across from me?

Do I write of the haunting space?  How you're in this town and yet, you feel so completely absent?

Do I write of the distance?  How there are 1,700 miles between me and a possible future I may never get the chance of taking?

Or do I write of the confusion that stirs when all of these problems slam into my heart at once?  How I miss you and want to know what I've done?  How I want to see you?  How I want to see him?  How I feel twisted for wanting you both?

The pain is physical.  An aching chest.  A shaking hand.  A pounding head.  A weak heart.

And still the page sits empty and still I sit alone and still he is not here and sill you're gone.

Tainted Castle

I did the unthinkable and let you inside my make-believe castle.  I showed you the walls made up of words, the characters that live in my head, the never-ending stories that hang like tapestries at every turn.
You made it beautiful.  You introduced colors to my black and white world and built new spaces in my head that I'd never dared to explore.

Then you left.
Everything is tainted now.
You tracked your footprint through all my thoughts and somehow, through my heart.  The words don't seem right anymore.  Not the ones I picked, no the ones you gave.  And I begin to wonder if they'll only ever be right with your presence.

I wish you had burned it to the ground.  Every inch of me and my many made-up lives.  I wish you had set fire to the paper walls and left me with a charred, empty mess rather than this.
Instead you made it better and added color and life and then you left me alone to deal with it all.  I thought I had found a collaborator.  I thought I'd found a like-mind.  A friend.

Now nothing comes out right and the pen in my hand is heavy and nothing feels the way it should.
I keep waiting for the numbness.  I keep waiting for the fire.  I keep waiting for the end of this maddening confusion.
But my chest still hurts.  And my words are still wrong.  And my fingers still shake.  And the tears still come.
And this make-believe castle I used to love so much is haunting me with the memory of your influence.