No time

There was
no time, to be honest.
No time process
or grieve
or find a start
to picking up the pieces.
I slipped and fell
in every direction
and almost everyone around
was falling too.
And I could hold
no fellow man
no fellow soul
as they were drowning
for my hands grew hollow
and the spine and heart turned to lead
and as the world itself
is poisoning its children
I have no energy
to lie
or feel.

*

I feel the betrayal
of things I'd never do
and words I'd never dare to dream of
seep into my ribs
sliding from their porous surface
to the marrow inside.

I feel cold wind
enveloping me and tilting me backwards
my eyes closing slowly
as I struggle for breath;
that breath does not come
naturally
but it should
should it not?

I let soundless sobs
echo against the walls of my mind
and I mourn
mourn
for the friendships
already in the graveyard
preparing the holes
for the standing ones too.

When the blood you created
turns into water
it starts howling at you.

15.5

  In another world or another time perhaps I would have known the perfect words, when to make the perfect pause, but I can hardly find the way to speak in a normal pace of life, let alone in the weight of silence. The silence has surrounded me, wrapped around me like a blanket - initially I believed that it would choke me but now it's turned into another layer of reality. It is no longer menacing and I stopped trying to trace my faults hidden in the many different folds of it.

  I know that sometimes both silence and noise are necessary for healing and I know that there are many wounds to heal. I want to feel bitter about not being able or allowed or something to this healing process but the truth is I understand. I believe his words way to much to dismiss the just so as to say they were never true. I believe he loved me then. Just as I believe he decided to let go and that has nothing to do with truth or lies.

  What has your life been like, truly been like, for the past two, two and a half months? I have no clear picture except small fragments here and there, except some bleak spots and some flowers you disclosed. What's my life been like, do you know? I wonder what you might know, I am quite certain you know a lighter, diluted version of the sleepless nights, the tears, smoking cigarettes in near desperation for breath. Locking myself in my room to protect what I can from the toxicity of the house, to create a bubble in which I didn't feel my own supposed home expelling me from it, mourning a shattered friendship, a lost job, all while the world slipped from underneath our feet, while worrying for all the people near and the future and the surreal thing that caught us in its grip.

  There were moments when I thought you could almost guess, amidst uncertainty, just how bad things truly got. Like you could sniff through the air the mud. And I wished I could share the load but it felt too selfish to do that and I'm ashamed to admit it. I'm ashamed to say that you had so many things to deal with that I didn't want you to worry about me on top of it all. I'm ashamed to say that the moment you stopped sharing your load, it felt like my right to share mine was also withdrawn. That is not your fault, I merely trying to explain how my brain works and the truth is that to share the ugly stuff I need the other person to do the same. So you see it did not matter, for better or for worse, that you told me to reach out when I didn't feel well. You tried but it was not enough, with me it takes time. How do you reach out when it happens over and over again, when it's not one thing, there is no bullet hole but many slim and nearly undetectable splinters that have found their way inside many different parts of tender flesh. And there's too many of them to ever forget they are there, any tiny movement creates a chain reaction. Where does it hurt? Here, here and here. There, there and there. In the past month it has been near constant, rarely high enough to stop one's breath in one swift reactions, but not low enough to make the passing of each day anything less than exhausting. 

  But where am I going with this even? I do not, at any point, seek to give out blame here and there. I merely look around and see neither of us around. I don't remember when was the last time I felt your presence around me. I used to not miss you because your voice felt with arm's reach and now there I look at the outline of our absence. I think we missed our moment again. And I don't know how to be there for us, I look around and I don't see our meeting point, it's like knowing there was a place I used to remember and I can no longer find my way to it or remember to describe it. 

  Maybe we run out of time. 

  I wish I could actually help.

On quarantine

  Quarantine has proven to be yet another time for self-reflection but it has also been greatly trying for my mind. The house has become toxic, the strands holding it together falling apart faster than it would in any other case. Last year this time around I felt so much sturdier, wobbling but somehow still starry-eyed. I felt I was heading always towards a certain esoteric balance and equilibrium. I felt secure in my relationships with others.
  Yet now I feel more pieces of my life needing to be cut off and taken away, for they are spreading on my psyche in a way that can only be called catastrophic: not exactly cancerous but rather closer to the spreading of gangrene. I feel uncertain in all things except my close family. Everyone keeps saying how this is a time for inner change and development and so on but the truth is that not all of us are allowed the mental space for such an inner reflection. A healthy environment and a lack of anxiety for basic things in the future are necessary for such a thing to happen.
  And so it is not like that. I am mourning for relationships that have fallen irrevocably apart and that have been doing so for some time now. I can at least have the time to do so properly I suppose. But there is not future that I can foresee to plan for. Everything shifts faster than sand under the gusts of wind. In some respects that is relieving and forces one to obtain roots in the present.

*

Stop searching

You said
that many years ago
indeed you put up a wall.
"I stopped searching for you."

But I didn't.
It took me much longer to accept
to move on
to stop looking around every corner
under every word.

And now
years later
you told me "I love you"
in the airport.
"If you don't come
I will.
I don't know
if I can even last a month."

Amidst all the silence
all the chaos
all the ground going under our feet
did you stop looking for me?

I have no reason to give you to stay.
I'm not even looking for one.
The silence has
encircled me.

Faces

Isolation has many faces.
It's leaving the house without breakfast
so that you don't stay
longer than necessary.
It's sitting in a darkened room
in an empty apartment
with your headphones on.
It's lying to your mother
so she doesn't worry more.
It's trying to writing a good morning message
struggling to find words
that don't sound hollow.
It's never writing that message.
It's declining invitations
for want of desire or money.
Wanting company
and quiet
and sacrificing both.
Isolation has many faces
but sometimes it's
the only
shield you hold.

Chaffed

My lips are bitten raw
and I remember
when my skin got so chaffed
from your kisses
and
your teeth
that it turned
too tender to be touched.
It was redder
and you laughed and said
we did not kiss
we dined on each other
instead.