Courting Chaos

It is difficult courting chaos. It often arrives unannounced – like an old friend and a pocket full of broken stars. It invites me in with bright smiles and a sinister heart. It remembers my name behind my clouded eyes and my trembling halves. It dulls my pain with a touch remembered and a whisper tender.

There is a never-ending river of hope that extends across the vast canvas of vile memories that tie down my rationality with chains of lies. The bruises of smoke leave my dainty lips and ribs of splintered quiet.The steadiness of suffocation holds me down with calloused praises and jealous tries.

Yet the trembling space between the undertow of memories that blurs the border of harm and hesitation - my mind yearns for a clarity that it cannot unsee. Your shadows close into me like walls and my search for breath leaves my heart.

And every touch becomes a permission I never gave. A resting hand where resistance is mistaken for quiet; for kindness; and for a yes - where my stillness is devoured and called desire. The apology of your aftermath etched into my skin. And echoes of regret haunt my soul.

Time folds upon itself upon the fog of guilt that never once carried in my bones and my soul bends outward in a promise for itself and more. The sheer fragility of my mind succumbs before there is a stark clarity of things that just scattered.

And then it rises slowly at the edge of my insanity with borrowed faces and borrowed lies. A drought of despair hits the river. My clouded eyes swallow a storm of unspoken promises. And it lingers in the doorway with eyes so-wide and fingers of molten glass. And, I smile as you disappear in the wisps of your hideousness and leave behind a fragrance of selfishness.

My eyes remain open - staring too wide. My voice becomes a screaming that never left. And, the heart becomes a stone that never melts. But it often melts unannounced - like an old friend and a pocket full of broken stars.

And grief arrives timidly.

PS: Truth, to be told, is an elaborate myth that we all practice in the event that the horizon of social norms ever touches our land of meaninglessness. To stare or not to stare. To blink or not to blink. To exist or not to exist.