hmullen09
We were foolish to believe that we could outrun it. Looking back, I think it followed us. It followed us on the skinny pathways through the forest, attached itself to our softened voices. It followed us past my tearful evenings tucked away in the darkness you refused to allow reign. It followed us closely while I listened to the quiet in your heart. It followed us until we started making noise.
The pulse in my skull is what is keeping me still. I need to let these hours go by me without another word to laden them. These words get me into trouble.
And we continue with these restless nights, though now they're restless by our wit and will. We'll lie awake. We'll lie awake until slumber shuts us out and we'll rouse wildly, wondering whether our wiles will find us wrapped up in each other again at sun fall.
And so these warm and languid nights betwixt blankets continue. I'll lie here with the hours breaking down before me, disintegrating under the weight of passing seconds. My eyes are open first, then closed, and maybe open again. I'll ask dawn to stay caged on the opposite end of the earth just so I can melt here for one minute longer.
I've been told that pattern recognition is a specific type of intelligence. So I trace the triangles on the heirloom rug with my eyes until my vision starts to stipple and darkness encroaches my view. Patterns.
This is the climate in which we break. The institution of loss is intrinsic in us--we are never without the weight of it. We lose things and we fight to gain them back, to gain them better. Always better the next time. Always getting better.
This institution is puzzling--the way we asked our questions into dead air. Funny how the responses we heard were only echoes coming back to us.
Not funny ha ha, of course, but funny sad. Funny deflated. Funny I-don't-know-where-to-go-from-here.
We should have asked more questions, then. We should have allowed our intellect to measure through the blind adoration we so willfully demonstrated. That blind adoration that left us lonely.
We thought love could fill those gaps. But not love, love. Love like I'm-right-next-to-you. Love like I-exist-alongside-you. Love like I-understand-your-demons.
But I didn't.
"There is nothing," he crooned, eyes drawn to iron. He was intent on ruining. Intent on tyranny. She watched in fascination as the storm of him swelled.
Something about the trajectory of this thing makes makes you shudder. You can close your eyes to it as often as you'd like--there's no transgression in that. The silence will help you breathe. But the facts remain, regardless of your despaired attempts to rid yourself of the thing. They exist, these facts. They reside somewhere in your mind where they've hollowed out a cozy place to sleep.
Two dawns in a dimly lit room. I was wrapped up, but this time prepared for the retreat. My unshakable sense of anguish. Shame! Your shame is an insidious thing and I swear I mean it when I say I wish it weren't clawing at your back.
load more entries
writing since 2010 · 34 entries · 33 days shown up
each square is a day—lit means H showed up.
4longest streak
33days written
0.1entries / week
the words H reaches for
eyesloveorangeheartwaitingfunnyfollowedspacequietweighinvestmentstaybettertalksuntucked