The Sun

So it goes,

I repeat to myself,

Every morning when my eyes don’t want to open.

I imagine what infinity might look like.

Or what eternity might feel like.

And I wish for one less second.

Earth’s orbit speeds up,

The year ends,

The world resets.

Or the past saves me from the future.

 

I touch connections that break down.

They were weak and unused.

Instead, I follow melodies in my mind,

To color pictures I draw,

Replacing memories with scenes,

And lines I didn’t write.

I want to steal from you.

I want to steal all of you.

I want to destroy myself.

 

Mistaken

When I was seven I started writing about myself,

I’ve been on the look an identity ever since.

I learned my name and decided that it meant something.

I made assumptions.

there should be answers.

I need a place to exist,

i want to the world to acknowledge me,

or I’ll feel this small and temporary forever.

and I know I’m small and temporary,

and I won’t live forever.

Odd

I started walking when i couldn’t find where I began,

then called it home wherever I settled down.

I found I’m fluid when I couldn’t keep a certain shape,

I’m curved or crooked or broken,

whichever you prefer.

 

I study definitions to try to locate mine,

a sense of self I lost when I left my childhood behind.

There’s a child missing in me.

I’m trying to find the man,

but he’s not visible in how I think and act and am.

 

I wonder what you’d call me.

I think of the past and remember what you called me.

But now it’s me calling out,

There are no words.

 

 

Human

I thought the only way to live an honest life was to be completely alone.

I tried to remove every influence,

Every idea that could trick my mind,

Make me believe in something comforting,

And strip meaning from life,

I watch people move in arbitrary directions,

Randomness dictate decisions,

And hopeless grasps for power,

I watch myself lean towards what I would reject,

Choices I would never make,

And wonder who it was.

How many versions of me are there?

Is there a single real one or are they all equally valid?

I can find what I like to imagine as me,

But I am not consistent.

The person who lets me down,

is also me.

There’s a guy I’ve seen consistently for 6 years. I don’t believe he lives anywhere and he has looked close to death since the first time I saw him riding a bike down a busy street, slaloming with the drunkenness of age and a life I can’t imagine. I spend half of my time questioning meaning, while he continues to live his life. I don’t assume to know what he thinks about, but from what little I can see of his life, it is sorted in a way I can’t achieve. He’s never asked for a handout, not from me or from anyone I’ve ever seen. He spends most of the day in an abandoned lot, set up with flowers all over the place. He might be social, but I haven’t seen it. He might sell the flowers, but I haven’t seen it. (I haven’t seen him eat or drink or sleep, either, but, presumably, he does all those things.) Six years is a long time to do anything. Maybe you’ve done something nearly every day for that long, I’m not sure I have. I imagine what it might be like to be him. To live in a way I understand. To have a goal and be satisfied doing it. To not care about a house or home. To not care about reaching some understanding of how the world works beyond how to survive in it. And to survive on your own terms as literally as possible. I don’t assume he feels any of this. I don’t know him. But he serves as a possible life that I’ve missed. One of simplicity and a calm. A satisfaction in stillness. I might never know what it’s like. I hold goals and a resistance to myself. I move and avoid.