the state of things as of right now:
the only day of snow--i woke up at 6 am to alarms i forgot to turn off and looked outside. probably going to be the only day where i see snow on the ground in this area. that's kind of tragic, isn't it? and yet still fitting for a fourth year, isn't it? have i always stood outside early in the morning, staring down my street, watching the snow fall, like i'm remembering you in front of my house too?
i dream a dreamless dream--i'm not sure it's something that can really be fixed. i have no more dreams, no more convictions, there were words exchanged before we saw the sun and these are not that. i'm sure there's something to look for, at least, there must have been once, but i've got nothing left to hope for. not even you, not even me, i think--i know--i'm changing. and yet i've stayed precisely the same. it's still the me from four separate years, perhaps coming on five. perhaps i've lost the idea that i should have lived for something or someone, and i've got nothing to replace it with.
maybe that's it--an older processing system, an ancient world that grows ever more ancient. four years ago i found my head rooted in that idea. some horrific version or essence of attachment, a melody that existed for one reason and one reason only. there was some terrible magic that existed in reaching for you every single day. there was some terrible magic in being the me i was used to for so long. and perhaps, yes, over time, wrenching my gaze away from it, i've slowly detached from her. and maybe that's why i can't write any music anymore. because there's no core, no self-sacrificial martyr of a catalyst, no more awful magic. no more fights about the way we were once connected. no more standing in the snow or sand or grass and looking out at you--something combustible, something transient, as i should have known it'd been from the very start. and yet it's awfully painful, isn't it? maybe at some points sharp, but mostly dull--an ancient world that grows ever more ancient?
and then, somehow, there is an old path i walked on and there is an old lake through the trees and these are words that i've stolen and my eyesight is failing me in the dark, but i am not unfamiliar to this pier--can i make out the shape of you below the surface, or am i deluding myself against deluding myself one way to two ways again? am i swinging my legs in the water at your expense? what is it about these certain months (february, march, april, perhaps?) that has me seated in front of a sealed box with a flask of poison and a ??-decaying atom inside? wikipedia says that "the experiment is not intended to be actually performed on a cat" which is likely true because why is it being performed on you? is it the me in the fridge, the you in the box, two hundred hours? is it a me with a thumbtack, a star-shaped hairpin, content to be cruel for a little while longer? is it a me standing in front of a corkboard with red string, wondering what you're thinking about and if you're a more patient or more desperate version of a drowning person? i wonder, what do you see when you look at me, i wonder, what makes you smile like that? what really is the secret, what really is the unknown that you're not telling me? and should i continue to be so mean like this, so cruel, relishing the idea that someone would choose to stand next to me at a given time, look back to me at where i sit at the keyboard? or should i open the box, see whether you've drowned or escaped, resolve this, end this suspended superimposition? or is it really in my right to choose for you? should i keep standing at the pier, continuously turning over the hourglass, asleep on the bus?
and i wonder, and i wonder, and i keep wondering, and the idea that i have at some point in time made someone smile and that someone has at some point in time thought of me with any sort of fondness is the most terrifying thing ever conceptualized. thus i remain here, debating endlessly upon the shelf life of words--
--if what you said is really still true in this moment, in this breath, if it's actually the truth, then i'd like to keep seeing you smile, no matter how selfish it may be of me--
--thus i remain here, dreamless, wondering if i'll ever earn the privilege of being deserving of love--
--looking at you in the lake, looking at you in the snow, looking at you caught in the webs of the past, "you,"--
--and the me in the ancient mirror, watching as time ticks down.