the observer falls
into a heavy night and
ceases to observe

there’s a deep, visceral anger that I seem to feel everyday
that no one ever talks about.
i wake up and my stomach roils with fury, wild and burning.
i eat breakfast and watch as my hand grips the mug, wishing I could shatter it against the floor.
conversation hurts with the acid I want to spit at my mother.
i watch action movies and ride roller coasters and go to haunted mazes and every scream I’m allowed feels like the briefest, most beautiful respite.
i look out at crowds of people and it feels like I’m breathing concrete.
i sit in my car and scream and cry and scream because it’s the only place I’m really alone and the guy in front of me stares through his rearview mirror.
i say that I’m tired but I really mean angry but I don’t know how to say angry so I just say tired and everyone is getting really tired of me being tired.
i remember when the anger was so big and I was so small and I only knew how to close the hatch of my mouth to keep it all inside because one time I let it out and then everyone knew about the anger and I came to the sudden terrifying realization that the anger wasn’t supposed to be evoked.
i am so angry and I thought everyone else was too and we were all in on some joke where we’re constantly hiding fury behind our eyes.
but I think, recently, I’ve realized that this deep, hot, painful, crippling, paralyzing anger isn’t entirely normal.
that not everyone wants to scream at their loved ones one moment and then stick a knife in their head the next.
instead the joke is on me, like I missed orientation and everyone seems to run like clockwork and I’m an angry little gear that’s rusted and out of place.
everything is so practiced and planned and poised and perfect and I just want to sink my teeth into it and rip it all to shreds, screaming and baring my throat to the sky, daring god to face me and bear witness to my unholy wrath as the blood of his creation runs down my neck.
anger grips me like a vice and lives in my stomach and I just want to have a conversation where I’m not trying to not throw the bottle in my hand.

To no fault of my own, the little I own
To the words that ask me to conform.
I feel so alone—in the deep chasms of a petrified soul.

An open door, shut by a closed mind to make a move.
Unwillingness of that to do.

Oh what a world to live in.
Searching, always seeking; in the depths be,
Of a tempestuous sea. I still can’t swim.

So comes that sinking feeling again. I’m sinking in
Deepest thought to the very END. My always sinking
HEAD. Especially when pride gave you a big head.

An unexpected trigger arose today. I won a brass mirror in a raffle that I was able to take home to use in my house. The staff helped me load it into my car, but now I have to get it into the house.

I helped my friend, who won a shelf from that same raffle, load it into her car. She took it home and her husband helped unload it and put it into place.

All of a sudden, a wave of sadness washed over me.

I don't have that.

I don't have someone to help me carry in the groceries, someone to sit next too while I talk about my day, someone to offer me a hand with the dishes, or someone to help with the heavy things.

There's some sort of double meaning there that one could uncover. How I not only have to carry the truly heavy things alone, but also how I have to carry the emotionally heavy things alone.

So much of my life I have been independent - practically taught to be that way from a young age. It was expected that if something needed carried, washed, or felt, I had to handle it alone. Typically I would consider independence a good things, but this one wrecked me. It reminded me of how truly alone I am in this life.

Of course I have friends to talk to, people who can help me move if planned far enough in advance, and friends who I can have dinner with - but every one of those things is circumstantial and temporary.

I consistently try to be comfortable with who I am enough that I don't NEED anyone but honestly, sometimes that isn't enough.

I may appear fiercely independent and self sufficient, but inside, I am still that little girl who feels forced to do the hard things alone. The little girl who was taught that help and companionship is a luxury only some people find. You can't buy it, you can't manufacture it, you can negotiate it. There are just some things in this life that alone-people will never have.

It reminds me of this movie I saw where the main character is so used to being alone that she invents things to make her life easier as an alone-person. Specifically she makes a device that helps her zipper her dress without the help of another person. Its so sad to me that the world and the way it works is created for community, its created for people who have people. True self-sufficiency doesn't exist.

Now I'm forced to sit here with this mirror in the backseat, reminded by it's presence that I am alone, at the core, in this world.

So I'll walk out of here, go home, and sit alone on my couch, eat dinner alone, and cry alone, while the mirror stays, unmovable, alone in the car. Like me, forced to understand that without help, you can never truly be powerful enough to be completely independent.  





-t.s.

My lips hold back the lava in my chest.
The burning, consuming, encroaching destruction is hardening my resolve more than you could have guessed.
I feel so at home in the flames that water is so underwhelming.
It’s the coals I sleep on through everything.
To look so long at the light only to blind myself each time;
You’d think I’d learn my lesson after each rhyme.
I’ve never felt comfort for long enough to recall.
The videos of me laughing are something that now make me bawl.
I don’t know how that feels anymore.
I don’t remember what you sound like or the color of your front door.
Your voice no longer echoes in my head.
Your face no longer plagues me in bed.
I don’t know you outside of memories;
Moments of my time that bite like fleas.
You make me itch still,
A symptom that which the spot can never refill.
I’ve been battling between anger and grief for so long now.
It’s a why; it’s a how.
It’s a feeling I can’t live without.
No matter how hard I try to erase the pressure or smother the intensity, the kindling always relights in this drought.
With a deep breath in, releasing all the smoke back out.
It’s my meditation now.
It’s my medication now.
To smell it on someone else and be engrossed in the poison that this can allow;
My dear, that’s intoxicating for me lately.
A mass we are swallowing with the passing moment cornering us innately.
I don’t partake with my own vessel but I will consume a host so absorbed.
They don’t see me molding my character every time I get bored.
One day I will have the entire puzzle lined up together.
Each piece fitted so perfectly, completely combined in a tether.
They will compose a tale so broken and numb.
That’s the feeling that fills my ****** drum.
Every tear is a bad dream.
Every eyelash is a wish for this story to have a different theme.

Floating
Like an astronaut
In the depths of my own mind
Devoid of anything but
Bitterness

Searching
For who knows what
In the vastness of my own home
Or so it’s called
But what do we really know?
But what really knows us?

Falling
Like a meteor
In the weight of the unseen
Heavy from the questions
And the answers