I hate the feeling of someone hollowing out my heart with a spatula
someone sticks metal inside my chest and searches for something that I'm looking for again.
There is no justification for this anymore, is there?
Is it the lack of love in your eyes that makes my throat close when you say good night and hang up?
Will I sip my hot chocolate, brush my teeth, climb into bed, and then leave my room to sit in front of my dog while I cry over things that don't exist?
Did things that don't exist really happen?
Is it fifty degrees Fahrenheit in a modern December?
I check the weather app every hour, waiting for snow to appear,
I want some whimsy, I want some love, I want some of your familiar laughter
and is it raining? You still love the rain, don't you?
Is it utterly cold in a modern December?
Picking at the acne on my face again, citing stress;
if you don't call me pretty anymore I guess it means I'm just not
but what a pathetic thing to think.
I live here and continue to tell you how beautiful you are in my eyes. It's only cold because half of the vent is covered by my bed.
What even is a modern December?
I'm sure time will pass, even if I slowly lose my mind and everything I am
I'm sure we'll eventually go on a date over winter break, and for a moment maybe you'll look at me like I'm worth something,
like you used to, you know, isn't that right? You used to do that so often, did you forget already?
In this December you'll say that you're already over the last one
and I suppose that's really more than I could ever ask for,
what with all the nights you spent slightly out of the frame, in tears, while I waited, while I begged a blurry-eyed god to give me a magic voice
and you must have forgotten already, or else we wouldn't be like this.
In this December, you'll ask me,
"do you hate me?" "do you resent me?"
and when and how could I ever hate or resent you?
In a span of time reading through four Decembers I will ascribe insanity to the days that eat my heart with a brass spoon;
that is, I will find myself waiting
as we are all still becoming, and I am still unchanging.
I am still the girl who sat in front of a computer screen five years ago,
begging to be something special, something unique, to someone
it's a small town that's not really that small
In this version of a modern December,
I feel my heart being gently, slowly, consistently hollowed away
wanting to beg, to plead, to ask you if I'm still special to you
if there's still anything specific or unique I'm good for, or if I'm just another component of an aegis against your loneliness
even if, still, for years I have resolved myself to exist without complaint nor matter.
And if there's a small box that still sits inside my desk full of handwritten notes from a time long gone, I don't look at it
I rip out my own roots, hold them back, as they are no longer desired nor necessary
thus we sit on the surface
maybe I'll dream a little bit about how things were and maybe time will grant me a beautiful curse again, perhaps in May, perhaps you'll look at me in some way again, or maybe not, or perhaps time will stop, or perhaps it won't, who really knows?
You have changed. I have not.
I go to bed with a stomachache