the corner shop

 do you think as you get older
and you start to see the signs of wear and tear
you will forget about me?
i have not seen you in years yet I dream,
I dream of a day where we accidentally lock eyes,
you see my face resurface in your old memories
just like you thought you had forgotten.
i have sat by the window at the bar
that I first visited when I was looking for you,
hoping that in any of these faces
I see myself and I see you.
how do you look? did you lose weight? 
did you lose your hair?
it would be so easy to find out,
I can always come back.
it's been ten years waiting for a moment to happen,
and i think i could wait ten more.
if the wind reaches you,
i also hope my words come with,
that they whisper in your dreams
that I was once someone,
not just a face.
the day i conquer that distance
i know something will die:
you'll never just have the time to bump into me,
take the time to sit down,
grab a coffee,
listen.
maybe we'll look at each other and wave,
briefly my hearing will stop,
i will run out of breath,
and look stupid.
nobody has your face,
your demeanor
or your voice.
nobody looks like you,
i'm not expecting them to do so. 
years will come and go,
I'll be sitting here,
never forgetting,
always understanding
what separates me and you
is a dimension of time.
if I'm lucky,
I'll see you in my next life.

tinnitus

I sit here with no t-shirt and a bloody nose, thinking of how I have been betrayed. It's such a strange and foreign thought, treason - is it necessary for a very specific routine to take place in order to assert that the dagger has been thrown? I always thought I overestimated my feelings, but time and places have given me the reason to say I somehow underestimated and downplayed myself for the sake of others. I feel the anger, I feel the anguish, sort of bursting out of my seams. I feel cheated, in many more ways than one, when I start to remember and reconcile the times in which I thought I was being heard and understood. It's in the people I placed blind trust and they used it against me. I was very young, as one is, and naive. So were they, I thought.

It's not movie-like, treason. Nobody's trying to kill me or rob me. I sit here and I think of all my accomplishments, and how I've been shadowed by conceited and selfish people.  There's always been a bitter taste in the back of my mouth when I said the word friends - it feels inappropriate, more so when said aloud. These people never mixed with my ACTUAL friends, I wonder why. No longer drunk or high, no longer fucking around, those days are (sort of?) over... things start to fall apart.

Losing friends is like losing a limb, I guess. One by one, they have started to leave, and it makes me feel lonely. Who walked out on who? What should happen first? It's only normal to not be on the same page with everyone every time, but I feel like I'm trying too hard. Nobody's keeping count of how many parties I go to.

I've never been too dependent on anyone, and when I did, it felt strange. Placing your whole weight in somebody else's hands is playing too close to the edge. I never fell, I think, well in reality I don't know. Growing older is not what I expected. Feels like a change of skin. Some days I don't recognise myself, and if I do, it's deeply embarrassing to accept that was also me.

These days loneliness takes a deeper space. When the night falls and the ringing in my ears won't stop, I wish I had someone by my side to walk me through it. I do, however, but he's a little far. This is what we want, what we both wanted. Inhabiting the space between being alone and lonely is a difficult game to play when the moon is out. Distractions only work for a period of time, and I have been considering getting back into writing - but for writing I need to read, think, create. I need to have a drive, a desire. I feel pretty drained of that lately. 

My therapist said, "I don't want to ruin the party, but that's just what growing up is like. You think about taxes, you think about the price of milk. You don't think about fucking or a text message when your inbox is overflowing with deadlines. It's about where you place your will, really." 

It's a process, it takes time, whatever. Waking up. Every morning the rings around my eyes remind me that I need to pick up my act and move on. From what, exactly? I was very well-versed in moving on from assholes who refused to date me because they so-called wanted to "kill themselves", but I'm not so keen or trained on moving on from a part of me that is foundational. I know how to close a chapter, hell I've closed so many. Why is this one so particularly difficult to leave behind? What's stopping me? 

It's the head count, maybe. Would they even miss me if they never heard from me again? I think of them as ruthless bastards, but are they? Don't they have feelings, a family, they own desire? Now is the moment where I start to doubt myself.

Time will probably cure my tinnitus and also ease my loneliness. I guess that's all that's left to do. Wait. I've come so far, too far too quick, and now it's just waiting for everything else to happen. Here's to growing up, I guess. I'm gonna go clean the mess I left in the kitchen before the roaches have a party tonight.