Sweet Lemons

Charting the evolution of indifference it becomes clear intelligence is a shortcoming. There is no mobile phone service in depression. The are no commercial breaks to interrupt failing lives.

Just this one night and then you can paint over everything I've drawn. Turn the clock back. Take daylight savings time for the heart.

And all the days after will be so much longer.

It's what makes a writer a poet. Not the pain. But the respect I have for it. After everything else is gone. After every lie has been examined. It's the only thing that hasn't changed.

It puts me to bed at night and wakes me up come morning. A callous clock counting down to my destruction. But still a batter friend than most.

The advantage is ours as the traffic lights choke the intersections. With machines made of skin and sweat we lurch toward the top of the hill. So that it may take us down again.

There is a certain immunity in knowing you are the disease. That it's always been there. Inside you. Always will. It still can hurt me, but I'm often better for it. Without what I want, yet undecided on if that matters anymore.

I used to let them. Taking my happiness one goodbye at a time. Writing. Always writing. Never knowing what I had said. In the ends I see the means. Skid marks on my wrists. Red lights in their voices.

We can't ever be us again. I'm not sure if I can even be myself since.

Or that I ever was.

Tearing our moments out of spiral notebooks. Jagged edges won't understand. Writing letters on the wrong side of the pages. It's not about what was said. Or what I wish was. We're only asking to be everything we never will. Storms without their thunder. Lightning without a rod.

A part of me will always be what we were.

Maybe you changed me. Opened the zipper on those clouds. Or maybe you just happened to be there when it all came tumbling out.

Either way.

You had better things to do.