2 0 double 2

Take me back to

that cold and eerie Summer

-

when all I could listen to

was Brian Wilson, Thom Yorke

and the breaking voice of Isaac Wood,

-

equipped with oil stains

on each finger

and a bleeding heart for a sleeve garter.

-

My lengthy walks like a pilgrimage

searching for something to heal

those fragments I held within.

-

Frozen moments,

paralysed beneath the warmth lost somewhere

in the sky,

-

the same songs, the same actions.

-

I long for it now, but it was Hell then,

-

maybe the same will be true for today,

eventually. Time sneaks up

-

like a wild and violent cancer

‘We’re, unfortunately, running out

of options to treat’

-

your love felt the same way,

melting, infusing itself with the parts of me I hated,

-

you claimed concern

but I felt the apathy,

the cold within your warmth,

-

the blue within the fire,

the sea frozen over whenever I walk past.

-

I can run all I want,

I was almost born to do it,

but your tendrils hold my flailing legs still,

-

your soothing voice

a misnomer,

-

a slow death, not painful

but unnoticed

-

til the agony sets in all at once

over two years later when

-

all is lost, including my youth.

Take me back, if you can,

-

to when the sunset brought wonder

rather than doom,

-

back to before

the structural damage had taken hold,

-

its icy grip

a slow erosion

of all I’d come to hold dear,

-

or more likely,

I was the one

burning every bridge

-

trying so hard to escape

before becoming ensnared,

before stepping into the bear trap,

no choice now but to bite off the leg

before allowing history to repeat itself,

before the wet cement could set

before I had to care and before it could be stolen,

before I’d have to tear off a limb to escape

before it even mattered,

before I liked myself or any other,

before I cared to wake up tomorrow,

before I don’t care to wake up tomorrow,

before I think at all

-

instead of simply

waiting for things to snap

my foot upon the twig,

then split in two.

-

The phone starts to ring, its cracked screen

reflecting an entrancing pattern through the darkened room

-

I don’t pick up,

stay on the floor,

body broken, unenthused.