Grief's Sweet Nothings

I have not fallen in love.

I swore to myself that if love ever came to my doorstep again, it would be because I invited it over.

My heart beats slower now; sometimes I press my fingers to my veins to search for a heartbeat, to assure myself that it is still there. When I was in love,

it beat so loud that I could hear it in my ears. At night, it became the lullaby I fell asleep to.

Falling asleep.

Falling in love felt like falling asleep.

I do not like falling asleep anymore.

My mind never stills.

With my heartbeat featured on milk cartons; there is too much quiet.

Road Stop: I am the skeletons in the car. My body shifts by itself.

My mind thinks it might be the last living thing in this autonomous vehicle.

Love was never intentional before.

It came quickly. It filled all the empty spaces.

The world is now a portrait of all the things that will hurt me.

Of all the ways love will bring me to my knees.

I should not be trusted to follow my heart.

It brings me to dangerous places; anything that will make it beat faster.

So it takes me to cliff edges and highways.

It drags me to candle flame and lover's arms.

Who do I blame but me?

But this broken little thing that I am; incapable of surviving the love that I create?

I'm gonna make myself sick.

I can't stand being without love; I can't stand being in love.

I am at the mercy of every thought I have; I have never had a feeling that didn't sink into me and stay.

I am too easily influenced; I am devastated by everything I have ever seen.

Maybe this, too, is love.

The way I am shattered by each poem I read; the songs I hear; the paintings I see.

I don't want to fall in love again. So why am I still writing poetry,

if not to romanticize the things around me?

If not to trick myself into falling for my own reflection?

It doesn't work.

My love is too selfish-- I just want to fill the gnawing, empty pit in me.

I thought I could save myself.

Any person should've done.

Even though the signs were there.

Did she see the way I looked at her?

Did she know what I would have turned myself into for her?

Bullet, needle, pen-- just say the word. I'd be it.

I don't want to lose myself.

I don't want to slip away so I can make room in my chest for someone else.

I don't know how to change.

I don't know how to be any other way

I don't know how to finally get this out of my head and stop talking about it.

It's the only thing that comes naturally.

All I can do is point to the hurt as I try to give voice to it.

It never works.

It doesn't sound like this at all.

I need another language worth of words to get halfway there.

To nail down the structure.

It has no outline that I can describe.

No picture of it that I can paint.

Grief.

The only word for it.

Something shapeless.

Something without bones but plenty of flesh;

the monster under my bed

and sipping coffee in my head

and throwing tantrums in the eves.

Grief is layers and layers of skin.

Too many to peel away.

No instrument solid enough to dismantle it.

Red herring; sailor's omen.

My grief is the one thing I will never part with.

It always comes back to this.

And it will again.

And it will again.

- Sunni Usagi-Koi

P.S. none of this is coherent anymore. Just rant pieces.