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.

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Thanks to Kayla for the awesome header photo!

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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.