I Found You

I Found You

There was a security in your presence, and the mistake was mine to place my future in your hands. It was mapped out along your veins and unraveling delicately at your fingertips. Now uncertainty hangs in the air like the infinite sky carrying the possibility of everything and nothing over my head. It occupies the spaces where my footprints have yet to venture. I had hoped to find a replacement within those empty spaces. I searched for recognizable comfort in their eyes or truth in their smile; a reflection from the mirror my memory held up to them. What was reflected back to me were abstractions that looked nothing like you.  

But I did find you.

Those strange abstractions I could not recognize strongly contrasted everything I remembered about you. I found you in their vacuous smile, the way it never quite followed through. The color drained from their eyes until it was but a blank stare. I could no longer find comfort in that familiar security. When it was over I was left with the empty feeling of abandonment. Your emaciated ghost still haunts me in the corners occupied by your replacements. When they don't quite smile like you, or look at me the way you used to I find you staring back at me, my future still being cradled lightly between your fingers.

The faintest of whispers creep through the timeless ground which once enclosed it so tight. Traveling through the perils of retrospect I can't help but wind up on the grounds where such memories lie. My fingers itch as they outline the key to a wrought iron gate sealing me from an indelible past I wish to forget.

These whispers become harsh murmurs and fight against the dirt trying n vain to keep it sealed. However, I cannot escape. Those words are picked up immediately and become visceral as they swim through my veins and poison me with that internal toxin of regret. I had thought these skeletons would find peace in the graveyard after being disregarded into the darkest corners of my closes. Instead their calls become more dense and sharp as they fight for my attention. They fight to be remembered. I beg to forget. I adorned their resting place with tombstones and gave well meaning goodbyes. I speak in eulogies at the thought of their essence remembering nothing but the best. I continually expand my vocabulary in hopes that I can find the words to quell these voices. The stages of grief have reached an intermission and I'm stuck in that 3rd stage of bargaining. Maybe I choose to stay behind the curtain in order to avoid the audience of the next production - depression. However, the calls from the maw of tarnished memories are pushing me to face the predetermined script of this torrid production. These voices refuse to die. They will not rest until I face the rotting corpse of my mistakes.

Running, hiding, finding hollowed out places. All in order to shield myself. Obscure your view of me. I like making myself purposely invisible. At least that way I know that your not being able to see me is of my accord and not necessarily an indirect consequence of who I am. 

I'd rather be forgotten than purposely ignored. 

I guess I just try to make the best of a bad situation. 

I feel there was a disconnect somewhere early in my development. Somehow the essence of who I am did not inject itself into the shell born into the world. Those around me are visceral characters, their souls flowing freely through their veins, their thoughts somehow in sync with not only themselves but those around them. I feel as though I was born into darkness, clinging desperately onto this body, hoping to find some sort of harmony between the two. However I feel so fleeting, as though I will never fully embody the person I was supposed to be. My heart pumps blood yet the beat lies somewhere in the dark. My brain shoots neurons yet the thoughts lie somewhere within the depths of a one dimensional dusk. I am simply the shadow following an empty shell.

Familiarity shrinks the world by defeating the mysterious and bringing to light every fear draped under the cloak of the unknown. Where once I used to crawl over untrodden land I have now become accustomed to my worn in footprints. They mark the places I have been, the areas I no longer fear for I am now comfortable among their confines. Even the slightest bit of unease would deter me from returning and recognizing my own familiar marking. But here I am, situated within my skin and finally claiming it as my own. The fear is eradicated, the shadows of the unknown finally lifted. Yes it is still a large vessel suited for a lifetime to be filled with journeys to corners, limbs, and ventricles. I do not contradict myself. I always foster the idea of today - the lack of belief in a promised tomorrow. So if the day's end is when my days end I shall leave this earth with an empty, untraversed expanse of land I have just begun to see. Maybe there will come a time when all territory within the borders of this skin will be mine to claim. As for now the familiarity is still within the tiny comfort zones of what I want to know of this foreign land.

The silence hangs heavily in the air, and just like your scent it has an overbearing presence which haunts me long after you've gone. The omnipresence of this silence becomes all consuming until I am sufficiently drenched in solitude. The atmosphere is devoid of what once was a content living. Spatters of discomfort paint portraits of images I do not wish to face at the moment yet the hands continue to move revealing that the time for retrospection is nigh. However, as those choose to reminisce I am forced to reconcile

myself with the phantasms I have yet to tame. Only then can I concede with the silence in the air that hangs heavy with your scent long after you have gone.