Disintegration Of Platonic Love

disintegration of platonic love

for now, the day i’ve feared the most is here. i’ve tried not to think about how college is the end of high school friendships, how the moment i realized i could love again it’s about to disintegrate, how i cried on the phone with you six hours away, how nothing ever lasts. i’m not homesick, i am home.

i miss you.

the face and the body doesn’t count, i want the thoughts in your head and the feelings you experience and the shit you say to be closer to me. i want you in my passenger seat again.

i worry about him. i wish i didn't but i care too much. and i didn't know someone could care back.

and i should know better.

maybe he was right, love is the worst but its worth it for the good things it brings you.

untitled no. 17

i just want to scream. i don’t have words. trying to figure out songwriting when i no longer write like i used to.

“chronic: can last for years or be lifelong.”

little snippets from middle school and lives that no longer exist, at least the way they used to.

picked up a guitar again, started carrying stickers and a white lighter with me wherever i go.

i am growing into a sad child.

its a shitty collage of words, it forms a picture but it’s not a pretty one.

and yet i can’t put my finger on what makes me sad and empty, which is perhaps what sets me apart from people who are just sad.

thirty feet below me are theatre kids projecting their shitty transatlantic accents out to an old theatre with nasty orange seats. i can't understand what they're saying but the audience laughs occasionally. something interferes with my headset and buzzes data indecipherable to me.

i’m laying, staring up past the black light into the ropes of our single purchase system, contemplating the consequences of climbing a little higher and falling a little farther.

it follows me everywhere.

or maybe i drag it with me without even realizing it. like we’re chained up, unsure, terrified, unwilling to know what life is like without it.

(i make it so obvious for anyone with any clue about me. i wonder what you think about it.)

i read the first five pages of the surrender theory and thought i was god

the timeline of this all is fucking pathetic. i’m sitting, chilled, at white table, white walls, white computer, white clouds, massive windows coated in dead bugs and old spider webs. there was a man sitting in front of me but he left twenty minutes ago. there was a woman with a kind voice teaching english to a group of,,, i don’t know. i couldn’t see but i could hear them. i have my headphones on, have mentioned that i’m cold yet? a year ago today i bought flowers, and then maybe i thought to text you. two years ago today, i let the day slip past me with no physical way of remembering what happened three years ago today, crash, bang, smoke. and i couldn’t help but laugh. twenty four hours ago today, she got discharged from the hospital. its crazy seeing someone so healthy, someone you thought would live forever,,,,, she struggled to get out of her bed, she needed help using the bathroom. she’s high on the same painkillers her mother was addicted to. great, if she makes it out of this alive, she’ll have dementia when she’s ninety. god, why must there be so much death in one life? god, i’m looking for answers and i’m finding them all in the things you told me were blasphemous. i won’t defend you any longer, you’re lucky i’m still keeping up looks. a year ago a week from now, i think i texted you. i don’t know, it was something dumb like that. you blew off a halloween party to clean my room. not sure why you felt the need to help me out. i wasn’t so depressed then, i was far worse when i was begging the universe to keep us together. but its exhausting begging you to be good to me, its exhausting waiting for you to come around. i spend all my time in the past, i can see all the symptoms of convincing ourselves it was worth it, i can see it in you still, now. i won’t let a round three happen, but i keep having dreams about you. but i have no way of reaching out, i deleted everything that has to do with you. and i will keep it that way. its all up to fate to get us together again, but i will have moved on to greater things. did you know your left headlight is out? its not, but i liked the way it sounded. “i love you,” written on the back window, i know it wasn’t meant for me but it feels like its taunting me. like i said, the timeline of all this is fucking pathetic. i like to think i’ve gotten over dear s, but this really is all the same thing.

the poet has a one sided conversation with their journal:

shit luck, i can’t align this to the left.

shall i fall into old traditions?

bottling and obsessing, bottling and obsessing.

he knows. he’d have to be fucking helen

keller to not know. but sometimes he’s

so oblivious. so maybe he doesn’t know.

he says things, like,

“i’m going to pretend i didn’t hear that”

so he knows. he knows.

he knows the way i look at him sometimes.

the things i say sometimes.

i love looking at him.

thanks for noticing it before i did.

you gave me words for something

i never needed to know.

god, maybe i should end it.

but maybe its not so wise.

thanks for telling me i’m good at writing.

even when i know you’re lying through your teeth.

are you okay? are you okay? are you sure? look at me. are you okay? hey, only me. its only me. thanks for noticing something in the way i kissed you, something i didn’t even notice until you gave me words for the pain in my chest, the,,,, for now i’m stuck, chilled, second floor of this god forsaken library. isn’t heat supposed to rise? i want you to read this, i want you to love me like i’m convinced i love you, i want you to see me the way i see you. its so much easier to love yourself when you know you’re capable of being loved.

so much of the “love” word. you know what you’re capable of.

we’re so close to it, yet you keep letting me drag you closer to it. i’m letting you read my annotated copy of the perks of being a wallflower. if that isn’t a giant “i’m madly in love with you” then i don’t know what is.

i don’t even know who s is. is it you? is it me? someone else completely? i don’t know who i am (addressing anymore). i don’t know where you went or where these sentences were leading, i just love to hear the sound of my keyboard clicking.

thinking about the dying part of death

someone new. new face. no face. i want to feel at peace. i know better. i know better. can’t think. frantic. switching between. switching. you’re killing me.

i want to be beautiful. i want to be a goldfinch that just slammed into a window, all i wanted was to be warm inside. i want to be the blood spreading over the tracks, all i want is to give agates their red hue, i want to give back to nature. (i want to swallow batteries, down blood thinners and sit in a garage with all the cars running.) disintegrate from the inside out.

there’s a difference between zoning out and derealizing. zoning out so bad you’re floating through life like nothing more than a ghost. can’t even force myself to stay present, to get out of my head. i wasn’t nervous, but i notice as i start to present that i (slip to the back of my mind) and my words became a stream of unrecognizable dialogue. i can’t stay here, can’t stay present, i wonder if my professor knows i’m not here, knows i’m at the back of my head. i’ve been told i’m a shit friend, he said he didn’t stick around because i was nice. don’t know what he saw in m((e if we hated each other) so m)u))ch.

time is of the essence, “well executed,” she tells me. thanks, you didn’t read my suicide note in the background. everyone’s been eyeing it up.

i keep dreaming of dying terrible deaths. homecoming queen dies in a tragic car accident (no details were given.) i watched rollercoasters fly off their tracks and crash into each other mid-air. gunshots go off in a crowd and everyone runs. (i keep all my secrets in parentheses.)

you used to think maybe i was happier if i was having dreams at night. this is all just one long fucked up drawn out entry in (dear s,)

i’ve taken the pills, i’ve parked by the tracks, but i’ve never gone through with it. my therapist knows i have these thoughts but i won’t tell her how i’ll do it. she asks all the wrong questions.

(i jerk the wheel of my car on black ice just to see if i care enough to live.) but who doesn’t? we’re all fucking miserable.

you’re a secret my peers don’t even know about. i mean sure, “i write on the side,” “i’m really more of a poet than an artist,” and all that jazz, but they don’t know shit about this. i like anonymity. nameless title cards. clipped out faces, blurred hands, and trailing frames. unfinished indesign files laying around my hard drive. the art of dragging things out for as long and as long and as long as i possibly can. i can break my work up into shows. but poetry doesn’t work like visual art galleries unless i give it visuals. and i try, all i’ve got are half finished sketchbook pages and notes crawling with ballpoint pen ink. and this isn’t even poetry, god, its just writing.

i think i’ve found my passion or some shit, less terrified for the future but still willing to let someone discover my cold body hanging by a rope. i’d be perfectly happy being an artist for the rest of my life but god, i don’t want to deal with the uncomfortable parts of life. i want words to flow from me not like they are, i want beauty dripping from my fingertips and i want people to like it. i want a fucking pat on the back. i want a hug. i want to be comforted, to be loved, which leads me back to why i do all this shit anyway. but it sounds pathetic,

Artist’s Statement:

I create art as a means to express my longing for emotional intimacy and desire to feel cared for. In “Seventeen” I depict my journey getting over a breakup that happened forever ago but please keep reading, there’s so much more you just don’t understand, i can give you receipts, quotes, i want you to feel what i feel, i want you to know that i— but i— i hope that you’re—

so i don’t know where these sentences were going or what the point is. the only reason i didn’t kill myself was because i wanted to graduate on time. well shit, i’ve got six weeks before i can officially fuck my entire life up. but i’m happy, right? i take long drives because the sunshine leaves a gentle smile on my face, not because i’m desperately searching for a distraction or a reason to keep going.

i don’t think i’ll ever find another person like you. i hate to quote that song that’s like “you’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you,” cuz fuck, that’s exactly what i’m trying to say. kicking, fighting, biting with the brick wall with absolutely clue i’m even here. well, it does, its fucking ignorant as shit. but that brick wall “loved” me, right? it “loved” me. it made me feel “loved” or whatever chemicals come with that. and that’s what i want again. he’ll take you in and make you think you can stop taking your antidepressants and then he’ll absolutely fuck your life over. and he just. gets away with it. and it comes out in all the worst ways possible. can you tell i’m resentful? its because i love dragging things out but i try to blame it on a desire to be an artist. some shit i’m not even good at.

this was supposed to end forever ago. but you don’t even remember. was there a point? was there a reason? no. you wanted to be beautiful and this is what you got.

because here at uni, i’ve been static. no one knows anything about me. no one ever asked. i don’t know anything about anyone. my friends say i’m an alcoholic in the making. i like to think there is more to me than that. but i probably am. i think i just wanna throw my life away. its so easy.

squeeze all the toothpaste out of the tube. punch a transphobe. smoke a cig. drink just to feel. drive somewhere far away. sleep in your car. spend all your savings. and then die. i’d be happy then.

you cross your arms. shut down.

“don’t worry about me, i’ve got a lot on my mind”

i smile as i turn the conversation back around to you. its beautiful, all the words come pouring out of you. you sound like you might cry. there might be something wrong with me, because i want you to cry.

maybe i just want you to be comfortable with yourself around me.

you ground me.

i really do love you.

nonetheless, i listen. as i start to run through my thoughts, try to select an appropriate response, you usually end up speaking again. i hope you don’t mistake my silence for not giving a fuck. if i voiced every thought in my head around you, you’d never be able to get a word in otherwise.