whirlwind

Numb. Not the best feeling but honestly can it even be classified as a feeling I mean who decides what is and isn't a feeling? Love is a feeling but it is also a series of chemical reactions in your brain, a hormonal change when you're around a person that you've eventually gone through enough shit with that you can comfortably say yeah, you're pretty good and I am not completely opposed to the idea of vulnerability, vulnerability on a very different level just because little things like saying the names of the people who bullied me is a kind of intimacy so is holding hands or having comfortable silence or laughing at the time we spend apart and how many times per week I am on a long long long FaceTime call with my friends or my mum who's actually just in the lounge room, isn't that hilarious, someone who is FaceTiming you or calling you or texting you and they're right there, they're right within eavesdropping distance because even though there's a delayed reaction because of the bad Wifi, there's something they notice about the way that you talk about that person, that special one the one that is just that little more interesting than the others, the one who got it and decided to be more real than ever more real and more present and honestly just more damn interesting sorry is damn a swear word like it isn't exactly like fuck or shit or oh sorry I went on a tangent didn't I did I tell you that I've actually booked a doctor's appointment for next week? Yeah, so I'm not going to be able to meet up with you and complain about my life, yeah, sorry, because I want to feel better, I've decided and sometimes feeling like shit is amplified when I'm around you and I write poems about you but you always miss the memo, you just ignore them or you don't text me for weeks but then bug me at why I didn't text and I just have wanted to tell you that sometimes it isn't about me making the effort, sometimes the friendship feels like a school project, a fucking group task that we did at high school and yeah, like I would've done anything to do a group task with you at school like that yeah that would've been great and maybe solved a lot of my issues because I really hate group work but my point is that this friendship is unreliable and I don't like feeling numb or shit or amplified-ly shit when you refuse to make any kind of effort and we all go through our own shit but I don't know anything that happens in your life like for real, I don't know how you are and you always say good and no one is fucking good anymore look it up; the world is on fire the water is getting harder to breathe under and the rain is getting more passive aggressive..well maybe it was already passive aggressive which means it's becoming aggressive but do you get what I am trying to tell you do you understand that we have one life and that life should be real and not full of filters and small talk GOD I hate small talk just tell me how it is tell me the rain ruined your hair or that you chipped your tooth in a pool on holiday because you didn't know how to dive or that you shiver when it's hot and people stare at you when you walk through the city or you only have ice cream on Wednesdays or you pronounce literature in an American accent because you watched the Simpsons too much when you were little - I want to hear your quirks and spirals and fiddly habits because I am human and thank fuck for that, it means I can give you the certified green tick that you're human but only if you actually were to open up and not be so closed off and moody all the time because I miss you now that I'm not talking to you now that I've decided to test how you'll feel when I don't invite you places or we might have time off at the same time and I'll wait and see if you ever actually give a shit or even consider texting me to say that you want to hang out and be friends still because maybe you were my friend when I really needed it and maybe poetry makes it easier to process, the codename makes it easier to process instead of sending you a pissed off voice note saying we're done and I don't want you to wish me a happy birthday this year and that I don't want you to ask me how I'm going or why I suddenly decided that a catch-up without any gratittude or interest on your part is my time, mu worth, wasted and shat on because I know that you don't want to get it that you don't want to be real or be here with me so forget it just forget I said anything this poem was a spin off of the truth and a remix of the words a past colder angrier crueller version of me could've said but the moment passed and I'm not interested in your backyard photos anymore I don't give a shit, you hear that I don't give a shit that's why you weren't in my Instagram post, it's why I don't make playlists with your name on them or give you any kind of glimpse into how I am anymore, you'll always be stuck behind that codename yeah that's right I've clocked it that you only ever use me when you want something but good friends are in each others' Instagram posts, good friends send each other playlists and laugh and good friends don't become strangers....good friends don't become strangers.

They keep trying.

~

Author's Note: This poem was originally supposed to be very strange acrostic of the word 'numb' but, as you can probably tell, that idea was sidelined very early on.

I hope you enjoyed this very free verse prose of rambles; thanks for reading!