11.20.2013
I’m extremely unfamiliar with the ability to want.
It’s been quite some time since I’ve wanted much of anything else than a full stop.
I had derailed in a way that some would call devastatingly beautiful
while others would call a cliche.
And why shouldn’t they?
It’s been told before
the so-called tragic story of a girl who had the world in her palms
but shattered her chances through an odd twist of fate.
What story was mine to take hold of the masses?
What made me more than arteries and veins?
Towards the end of the existential crisis that had become my life
I was scared of what I’d become:
A girl who lived for none
not even herself
who hid behind billows of smoke and walls of mirrors.
I tried to make sense of the remains,
the pieces that were left
but all the letters were scattered
with no chance of forming words.
But words were not needed.
You can’t spell out a midnight call,
a tire screech,
a broken door,
a failing heart,
an IV drip,
or the sound of sneakers squeaking on an emergency room floor
no matter how you rearrange 26 consonants and vowels.
But the good news is time doesn’t need any letters to be told.
Eventually the numbers roll on without any care for your plans or for you.
The good news is as time rolls on people grow up too.
So I suppose I found the thing that made my story louder than some I’ve read.
It doesn’t end at a funeral with a girl not grown cold and dead.
I’m extremely unfamiliar with the ability to want
but I’m glad I have big dreams again.
It’s been quite some time since I’ve been able to think about much of anything else
besides who would come to my wake
or who my letter should go out to so that they didn’t see me as I lay
or who I should write so that for the love of god, someone had better do my make up right
and put some fake lashes on my eyes.
I suppose you only think those things when you’re ignorant of how to die.
And I’m glad to not think of those things
though dreaming can be scary too.
There is room to fail when you go out on a limb
but I’m a strong believer that death from falling from great heights is much more dignified
than those who lie in a self-dug grave and die still breathing in the casket.