Sometimes I Still Think About Not Being Here, See All The Futures In Which I Have Ceased To Exist. Then

Life should be a long drawn affair of yellow.

Fell in love with a stranger for a few moments today.

Inevitable

We were a prolonged sunset,

Something beautiful

That we knew 

Would end in darkness anyways.

We were a mouthful of words

The tongue couldn't help but mess up.

We were a tiny cat

Who climbed the big tree

And forgot it had yet to learn 

How to come back down.

We went skydiving,

Up, up, up 

And the earth pulled us back down;

We free fell into our own demise

And made a mess,

We left chaos behind.

I am a walking grave

Of all the people

I did not let myself become.

This sadness is the only eulogy

They will ever hear.

There are skeletons which live in closets

That have been kept shut

For far too long

And the skeletons need their coffins

And the coffins their graves

And one too many graves

Makes a cemetry

I am the cemetery:

The door that locked its own kind out;

The graves, the coffins and the skeletons.

But I am alive, goddamn it!

Buried within myself

People I did not

Let myself become.

People were not meant

To carry so much of

What wasn't alive,

Coffins do no justice to the living.

Lives aren't meant

To be spent within boxes,

How the hell did

We get tricked into believing

They will do death any justice?

You are alive,

And everything

You could've been too,

Just not here.

But somewhere,

In another universe,

You exist

But are everything

You have always wanted to be,

And perhaps,

Someday in this life too.

There are things we do not talk about here.

Do not mention the lines that once

Ran along the length of your left hand,

Carved by you trying to play God

When you were barely a person//

Perhaps that was the point.

Half a year trying to make the scars disappear,

The other half spent convincing your own damn self not to.

Listen.

There are places in your head

You could disappear off to,

The ones which will make you so, so happy

And perhaps even a maniac,

But aren't maniacs just people

With enough conviction

To want to live in a world

That was their own mind's doing?

I am proud.

When the Earth tumulted and collapsed on me,

Trying to throw me off itself,

I held on with bare hands.

I dug my claws into the brown soil,

Trying to become one with the Mother,

Trying to grow myself some roots to stay.

I have already been here longer than I had imagined,

To have a place at all is magic in itself.

I have so much life left to grow roots out of.

I was not the broken thing anymore.

I cried and fought and fell

And scratched and clawed

My way back from hell.

I made an armour out of this body,

Grew my heart into a soldier,

Marched to once friendly lines

To cut off all ties

And fought you off

With all my might.

You weren't here anymore

And I grew myself a garden,

Planted my heart in its bosom;

Took the armour out to let it rust,

Felt the sunlight burn my thick skin,

And I almost could feel the years turn,

And could almost feel myself turn to dust.

Do not let flowers bloom in place of your words. Speak Up. No more shrinking yourself, staying quiet, being worried if you'll step on someone else's toes. They will shred you and they will like it, enjoy it even. Speak Up. Scream. Let it be known that you are here, you are here and alive and you sure as fuck will ensure that they know it. Speak the fuck up. No more hiding.

Are you scared to death to live

Or are you scared to live

Because you know you will die?

If there was no one to observe the universe

Would it cease to exist as we know it?

If a tree falls in a forest but

No one is around to hear it scream,

It still thuds and the ground still rumbles,

It's just that no one feels it.

So perhaps you are so obsessed with

Letting people know you are here

Because you know you could die

And no one would see the stars of your life collapse,

Feel the rumble of your loss of life.

It is possible to go away, quietly,

Unnoticed, leave things unchanged-

No one to mourn your loss

or to question higher powers

Over the lack of your presence

Or to tell your stories.

How terrifying it is to think

The universe in my mind could go away with me.

so maybe there will be no coming of age.

maybe there will be no moment, signifying glory;

hell, maybe there will be no glory.

maybe we'll simply be two people who were here and then weren't.

the gods will not line up moments for us to scavenger hunt our purpose;

maybe we will not have a purpose.

or a god for that matter.

in one moment you're driving home and you're singing loud with your best friend;

in another you get mistaken for a man with your helmet on, the bulky death bike and then you get out of a ticket when the policeman sees your face and you come home in giggles.

in another moment you've decided to live through another day.

so maybe we will not be anything that aches when it is gone.

maybe we'll be mundane and chaotic indecision floating in an abyss of our own selves

and maybe you never get to meet that famous 2010 singer you liked as a teenager,

and you never get to learn the fourth language,

or go to that remote country

or kiss the love.

maybe there is no love here.

maybe we will go quietly, with naive hope that is false but you hold on to anyways

because if you do not have this hope to hold on to, there is nothing else.

to hope is to have the courage to pray, against all odds,

to pray that there is someone out there lining up things for you,

lining up lives and people for you to become.

to have hope is to be terrified of all the realities.

we'll go quietly, unnoticed;

and yes this does not match what we wanted to be,

but there are happy endings in all those poems and stories to make up for all the ones you never get to have in your reality.

A.G.