I.
Condescending. Undertaking.
Met with hushed tones.
It rings in my head,
Like my alarm in the morning.
It nags.
It pleads.
It begs to be heard.
But I hate the way you say my name.
I know you exist.
You loom around corners,
Hiding in shadows,
Lurking in the dark,
Waiting for the perfect opportunity.
To pounce.
To strike.
To finally capture your prey.
You know that you have me,
Wrapped around your finger.
As I cling to a world,
That I haven’t lived in for so long.
That you swear is still meant for me.
But I’m not sure I’m strong enough.
Or have the perseverance.
Or the heart.
II.
I know I’ve been running for so lo
Today was insignificant.
Simple. Ordinary. Average.
The trees did not possess any sort of swagger in their sway,
The breeze did not strike my skin in any special way.
Then my phone screams for my attention.
My eyes adjust to the brightness,
and then it reminds me what I thought I had forgotten,
Suddenly I remember kisses and midnight calls.
Web came chats. Sneaking just five more minutes.
Being so damn crazy about each other.
I remember living in the shadows,
And I remember when you brought me to the light.
And all the other cliche bullshit.
I remember the day I left,
With the mixtape on repeat in the background,
And even the worst song o
Picking scabs again... by MadamGuillotine, literature
Literature
Picking scabs again...
There you sit again,
Taking up my precious time,
Refusing to stay shut.
Rejecting the idea of healing.
I pick and I prod,
But under my skin you'll always stay.
They say it's the ugly part of me.
A habit I should break,
But I don't want to.
Jonesing for satisfaction,
Await the bleeding happiness,
Then regretting it ever happened,
Knowingly giving false hope that it's the last time.
They say you'll infect me,
That I could lose part of me because of you.
Because I kept opening you up,
And letting the wound fester.
After all this time, they say you'll scar.
You'll be a tattoo
A memory
A constant mocking mark
Just because you were the wound I
It's in the way you meet my eyes,
And the rest of the world melts away.
Right before we almost poured our hearts out.
It's in the way the smirk formed over your face
During the last dip
In that dance that we almost got to finish.
The way our hands touched for just one instant
Where times' hands finally rested
As I almost couldn't tell if it was deliberate or accidental.
The way you wouldn't look me in the eye
Your hand ready for flight on the doorknob
And I almost asked you to stay.
Unsure looks with unanswered questions
Silence like the smoke after a battle
Because you almost thought I had changed.
Looking at the moon like it has the an
I laid down in the apparatus that engulfed me, reluctantly nodding my head ‘yes’. It resembled a cross between a dentist chair and those machines they put in hair salons to give women hair permanents. He pulled the top of it over my head with a small bit of hesitation, like he was giving me a last chance to not go through with it.
“I’m going to need you to keep your breath steady and your mind calm…”, the doctor started giving a ton of instructions.
“…Skipping around in a dream-like state…”
Everything slowly became fuzzy.
“…Starting from your earliest memory…”
It wasn’t a day that one could particularly call “extraordinary”. It contained no holidays or any celebrations to jubilate. There were no relevant anniversaries or birthdays to rejoice over. The wind did not blow in any particular way that rendered a disturbance. The birds did not sing any sort of different tune. The trees had no special swagger to their sway. The sky was its familiar hue of cerulean. The sun routinely rose in the east and set in the west. And I, just like every day, sat at my desk with both elbows perched upon the top, face pressed into my hands, cursing that very sun I mentioned for rising. How dare it rai