If No One Heard It, Did It Happen?

If no one heard it, did it happen?

If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?

(The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab)

Proof of my existence:

I am my unmade bed

My week old unfolded laundry that was Fresh once

I am the disappointment in my mothers eyes

And the scars I have left on lovers and strangers

I am my clothes I have donated

And my compilation of pintrest boards the innocent scroller will accidentally stumble across

I am the the jokes I penciled into the walls of my middle school bathroom stall

I am the dust I leave behind

Dead skin cells, reminder that they were living once

I was living once

I had once had the pleasure of laying my palm against the surface of something tangible and it felt the contact as much as I did

I am the peices of myself I have left scattered in the people I have let hold me

Long enough for parts of me to become caught under their fingernails and in their eyelashes

I am not my mistakes

But I am their consequences

I am shrapnel scars left by the promises I shattered

I am the pastries I have bought

My coin accumulating into something greater than it once was

And in that small way I make someone's dream a reality

And in that small way I am immortalized

I am the corners of novel pages I have folded

And the sentences I have left highlighted and the notes I have scrawled in its margins

I am the half finished stories I wrote in the 6th grade

I am my poetry

And the things I have discarded

I am my clouded breath dancing on the cold wind momentarily before dissipating

As it becomes one with the ether forever adrift

And in that small way I am immortalized

I am my embarrassing childhood photographs

I am the energy you spent on me and the time you wasted on us

I am the things I have created but perhaps more the absence left in the wake of the things I have destroyed

I am the stains I have left and the sins I have committed

Out of spite, out of desperation, frivolously or unwittingly.

I am the way my name burns yours tounge when your mouth tries to wrap itself around its pronunciation and the scalding memories

I am

I was

here.

And there is nothing left unsaid, and yet a million things unheard. The chasm between us widening and deepening and every word tumbles down into the depths and we remain. Sore throats and hoarse voices and strained eyes trying to make out the details of your face that drift farther away with each passing eternity. And I suppose, that we could jump. But who knows what awaits us? How far we will fall. If We will hit the bottom alive. If we will drown in the accumulated sea of sentences that have amassed over the years. If we will see each other the same in the darkness. If we will ever resurface.

But I will jump first. If only to know it will be your voice that drowns me. If only to attempt to consume everything you ever tried to say before it devours me instead. If only to be suffocated by your truth. If only to be laid to rest here, amongst the sins we birthed together. Here, next to the slowly disintegrating corpse of our love. And perhaps I will never know peace. But I will have known the whole of you, And that would have been enough.

And in the end, is it not the desire for beautiful things that destroys us all?

~gold sinks easy, my poor king midas

Your wife changes her hair color every season and her personality adjusts slightly. You’re secretly only in love with Autumn wife. She just came home sporting her Winter color.

"Just

Tell me

The truth.

I promise

I won't

get

upset."

It is a lie, of course.

But everyone wants

The truth,

Until they have it.

As it is always so much more gruesome,

Than one could have imagined.

I do not blame you

For becoming angry

For the truth is an infuriating thing.

~reflections on the gentle falsehoods that have never turned me away and the untruths that have always made room for me to believe when I had no where else to go

And I

Let the quiet of the night devour me

Let the darkness feast upon me

(As though they crave even the crumbs

Of what remains of my existence)

And I find myself laying awake,

(Patiently)

Waiting

For them to come for me

Because it is in these moments

That I feel most desired

And even if I dissipate this way,

(Slowly consumed night after night),

Atleast I will fade

Unafraid

And

Feeling

Wanted