Anaesthetic 12: Undelivered Love Letter

Dear love, -the words I write cannot pen your significance to me.

My thoughts are incomprehensible to describe your inner beauty.

And so my every thought of you I’ve attempted to compile,

In this letter, is my failure to express anything worthwhile.

When I look at your face, oh where do I begin?

Just the thought of your smile and wide grin,

Brings my belly butterflies beating their beautiful span,

Floating petal to petal, eight in total, again and again.

Your strong hands I held that revealed a ragged love past,

Hand in hand, working towards making this modest love last.

Offering each other simplicity was all I could ever ask for,

And a soul to talk to at night when stranded in a downpour.

Looking longingly at the moon, I wondered my little game.

If the mysterious moonlit sky for you and I was the same.

And when the sun shines through the fog in the hazy dawn,

You wanted to ask me to brave the fog on your front lawn.

Oh how I wanted to be there arm in arm in the early morning

And wander aimlessly without any direction, without caring.

How happy we were, it seemed to go on without end,

I thought I had truly found love, and my greatest friend.

With love… 

The list we made of all the things we wanted to do together

Will likely remain a memory in this little letter forever, however.

If you had just left me to wonder, would I still be the same?

Would my mess of a life be nearly as messy if you never came?

The only way we realize our own loneliness

Is to have it in stark contrast with its antithesis

Staying locked away hours writing the words I write

Waxing reflexive on this page all day and all night

I think it is finally time to end what I held so dear

So I can finally vanquish the very thing that I fear

But now in the present I can finally thank you so much

For what have I learned since we’ve last touched:

I thought I wanted my heart ripped out,

torn to shreds, bled red in my death bed.

What need was there for it after all this?

The fear of being the only one able to hurt you,

was the same fear of you wounding me grievously,

And yet I feel completely deserving of that pain.

I thought I would rather the blow be dealt swiftly,

Lest my heart be able to love again.

It would be better than the cold bitterness I felt thusly,

It once was a dull and pulsating pain,

An aching anxiety that never once could leave me.

The fear of losing you was the only thing that mattered.

Hopeless, helpless, useless: How futile they are

in describing this despair of my loss.

But my true loss wasn’t the loss of you

It was the missed opportunity to change someone’s life.

My true despair I fear is that strange feeling.

So rid me of your memory, for my mind was rushing

with the regret I’ve carried since we last spoke.

I was helpless to help ease our doubts about us,

Useless to sate your needs, appease your anger,

and worst of all, hopeless to ease your sorrows.

It left me feeling unable to be a person again,

when you left me in my misery, in silence.

So I ask you, without you, would I be off better:

With love, or without this undelivered love letter?

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Anaesthetic 4: Still Life

It’s really not fair.

A still life photograph just gets to be.

Nothing moves, and yet it gets to feel alive.

A great photo. One that lives beyond its scene,

But the photo of this sad woman is inert.

She has to keep her lethargic expression

Forever, an entire lifetime in the same place.

She festers in her unhappiness for all eternity.

I wonder if she had the capacity to feel content

With not having to ever be taunted by happiness;

Feelings that are so fleeting and so out of reach.

How lucky is she to not be tempted by such folly

I don’t get to move on.

The finality of still life was enviable.

The subjects were nudged, just so, into the right position.

Instead, I was stuck in an infinite loop, a living nightmare,

Like that moment of time was paused, rewound, and played,

Over and over; slides were shown until each cell deteriorates.

I can’t just forget about it.

It melts into the frames and that moment of time

Burns into my cheeks, the searing wetness of droplets,

The hot sorrowful stream flows from my eyes

Burns in more still than any photograph in my mind

And becomes more vivid and real than any memory.

 Acting as though nothing ever happened.

I can’t look you into the eyes as I once did.

I don’t get to feel the sudden rush of joy as I had before

And you were the thief that robbed that pleasure from me,

But where your eyes are, I don’t get to see a face any longer.

All I can see is everything that was, everything that used to be

My vision fades as I drift in and out of that time and place

As my mind constantly plays my heartbreak on repeat.

No closure.

I don’t want anything from you, ever,

What I truly want is to never want anymore.

What I never want is what I still have.

To have that moment erased forever

So I can go back to looking at faces like faces

and start thinking about the past as the past

and I can finally leave then back then.

I want to live now like it’s now

I want to breathe my breaths

and I want to cry my cries

and sob for the present

Then collapse inward

And avoid contact

With you

But…

Memory betrays

There’s never enough in frame

Life is not still life.

---

Thanks to Kayla for the awesome header photo!

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Anaesthetic 2: Nocturne

The days I can’t find. I’ve looked;

I cannot see beyond the pillow.

I’ve tried and tried, but in my dreams

Are my dreams; My aspirations are of sleep.

During the day fall is my night rise,

Wakefulness is my fight, my solemn right,

and my struggle, what trouble.

The musings of malcontent

Infesting my consciousness

Like the nightcrawlers writhe.

Beneath my feet, the centipedes,

And all other things that impede

hide under the folds, nooks and crannies

of the darkest parts of my being.

Above me, the moths breed

In my fleeting thoughts of recluse.

Within my eyelids, I find refuge

 And my only respite is when

The day stays away and my night stays night.

Promise 8: Blank

Illuminated by a blank white screen

my reflection. The void staring back at me.

I see the lines on the display, like needles.

that prick my skin, I bleed not blood, but tears.

From my eyes, I scrape the disbelief away.

My heart in blank and my few thoughts,

fraught with frustration, my mind in blank.

As vacant as the bright white screen,

Blank as the sheet I wrote this poem on,

and about as painless as the clean slice

of the paper through and in between my fingers.

One look at my hands and I feel my index finger well up

with anticipation as I pinch the sides. Nothing.

A bloody disappointment, Not even a droplet.

It’s my writing hand that steadily holds the pen.

It remains frozen in place, with nothing to say.

Blank are my thoughts as I read the lines unwritten,

that would send all my happy thoughts to ruination.

Blank as the time before and blank as it was after it happened.

As void and empty as I wish it was after it was said and done.

I wish it could have been that blank like it was before.

and I could pretend that it never happened at all. Forget.

I could carry my vacuous smile when everything was so simple.

I wish to be so blissfully ignorant,

but now I try only to think of blank

Because blank is all I want to think of you.

Semblance 7: I, Apart from You

I want to stand by You again,

But my legs have failed me.

Without hope, I cannot stand

The sight of myself. So lonely,

I want to feel like myself again.

My thoughts of You yield no answers,

To be separated from You, is worse still.

When that feeling of closeness wavers

Without it, I’ve neither hope, nor will.

I won’t be able to overcome my gravity

For my legs are aching with numbness

And my heart is heavy with emptiness,

The weight of its despair gives way.

I cannot hope to stand tall without You

Without your strength I’m unable to be.

To venture forth, I can no longer move.

I am hindered, trapped by my inability.

I want to hope again. I can’t imagine

Which is worse? To be truly alone?

Or to be forever waiting? I’ve known,

For You, I will be eternally patient.

It is You, I want to stand by again.

---

I’ve been trying to use fewer regular rhyme schemes in favor of something more irregular. The stanzas that slightly alter the rhyme scheme are meant to bring attention to specific lines. The clustered rhymes kind of naturally came out when I originally drafted the poem, so I stuck with the format rather than trying to make everything rhyme in the ABAB format for each stanza. Aside from all that technical stuff I wanted to play around with the significance of how far and close the ‘You’ and ‘I’ are from each other.

The short story is nearing completion, it is basically in the rewriting and editing stage. I am aiming for before the end of March. I am also considering arranging it with some folks to read it live, so if anything happens with that, I will announce it in the next post.

~Mari