I fall deeper into the dark, fearing and craving your touch. You’d hate to see me like this, so in a misplaced fit of spite I swim further, further down. The dull cries and pleading of everyone we loved grows faint. Audible, but more or less irrelevant. Tolerable. Ignorable.
I’m aware, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I’m making a mistake. But it’s easier this way. That’s how I justify it to myself.
Truthfully, I just can’t resist hurting myself more when you’re not around to do it.
Press a little harder on the knife, my friend. I think it might be good for us. Just like before–I promise not to break this time.
You’re the bloody gatekeeper of the void in my head. Spinning wildly out of control, tethered only by your darkened touch. I miss the man you used to be about as much as the one who still knew you. Even so, my love.
It’d be healthier if you’d straight up killed me.
Hello.
It’s been a while.
There’s been a lot of stuff that’s running through my head.
I think about you all the time, but I can’t for the life of me remember why. It’s not your fault, I know it’s not my fault, but still the problem persists.
I’ve got my life back, right to where I want it. Everything’s in order, everything’s as it should be. If you’re not here with me, then maybe that’s just how it needs to be.
I say that. I believe it. I do. But in the back of my mind, searching for whatever it is I’ve lost, I know. I know.
I’m still here, and I will be for a while. Still missing, and always missing you.
There’s a sense of cold, echoing through my bones. I’m peering through the dark, but your light is nowhere to be seen.
I cling to every memory; the ones no one–no misguided interloper–could ever pull away from me. And yet, if it meant feeling your touch again for even a second, perhaps it would be worth it?
I used to fear I’d never escape your orbit. But here I am, spinning idly in the dark.
I feel
sick to my stomach. But in a way that’s entirely new.
This was never meant to happen. I’m not prepared. I’m not okay. This was never meant to happen.
She’s perfect.
shes perfect.
Falling, falling. The darkness curls around me. This strange world I’m trapped in offers no possible respite.
Alone with the ghosts of every mistake I’ve ever made, I curl into a ball and plead for release.
There’s a face staring back at me in the mirror. Prim and proper, young and pristine. Younger, somehow, than I’m expecting.
There’s the same dark hair, slicked back like all the photos of my father. Deep sunken eyes staring through me, hating everything they see, everyone they see, everything the world has to offer.
There’s something I’ve forgotten, mixed in with all the hatred and violence those eyes have to offer. Is it optimism? Youthful arrogance? The ambition and drive to tear from this world all that it owes me? I don’t know how I lost that. I don’t know if I miss it.
There’s something reaching out for me. Offering a gentle hand, unmarred by the poison under its skin. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what’s happening.
I fall.
I’m a fool as always, but I’m not wrong, am I?
Part of me wants to cling to this, to him, to the scraps he might be willing to give me if I behave, if it works out, if no one is watching. To push away the problem, act like I don’t care. Part of me desperately claws from the inside out, insisting I do so. That I’m overreacting. Making a mistake.
The problem, as it ever is, is that I care too much.
I’m not the heartless man I pretend to be. Perhaps I never was. Perhaps none of us are.
“Your life is not your own” is a horrid sentiment. I’ve always detested it.
Perhaps its the fact that it’s been true of me for so long. Living or dying by someone else’s whim, content to serve, thrilled to be somebody’s sequel or plot device. I’m sick of it. What right does anyone have to my life? To me? Nobody owns my life but me. I can do with it what I will.
I’m fine now. I’m no danger. But leave me alone. Leave me alone.
There’s a subject I’ve been dancing around. Never quite sure how to refer to it. How to say it, what to call That Person.
The center of my world, the cause the effect and the source. How could any one word suffice? A name, a line, a poem. It all feels too cheap somehow. Like writing a label in crayon on an ancient priceless vase.
My life has been not my own for so long now. It’s a terrible and disgusting thing when obsessive love finally wraps around to hate.
Echoed Refrains 