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He said to her: life was nothing but a dream worth living or worth dying for depending on what you choose here and now.
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Wake all the neighbors by apollo rosa
The fading pink sky escaping over the tracks from the back door window of the train to the sound of Sufjan Stevens
makes me think of him.
I feel almost happy, mostly relieved—
that I know I’m not as numb as I feel.
Maybe it’s the recent madness, or maybe it’s the come-down of the crescendo of almost two months spent living at a non-stop running pace.
It’s all plausible, and a combo of post pain-and-fear shock is most probably it
But as I looked upon my brother today in the corner seat sunlight on Baldwin street
Say he was a loser
Only the Monday afternoon half-carafe of white wine loosened my numb face
To betray blank
And let my eyes fill with tears
Though none fell
How has he trained his own numbness to such a T?
And how and when will he crack?
And when would I if
if
if
if we were to become
the destinies we’re doomed to?
What were we to do?
If we believed this—
Someone else’s song sings through me, always,
But I didn’t write those words
When I open my mouth
Nothing comes out
Throat dry
Jaw clenching
Teeth grinding
Like he did in his sleep
I remember
I always pretend,
Or try not to complain,
Either way it’s all the same:
I don’t sleep well.
I toss and I turn a thousand times a night through torrid symbolic dreams that are so vivid when I wake at the smallest disturbance
—like morning
Or his teeth grinding
Bad blinds or an unshakeable thoughtfeeling
‘Cause in that half-born state,
Aren’t they just the same?
Like dreams make mythologies of buried feelings, hidden knowing
That may often or never surface as formed thought or decipherable feeling in waking
Hollering with all my might at the world
Is all I can think to do
To fight the numbness
—I won’t resign myself
(no, not yet, I’m not ready!
A friend distracted by her own self-doubt-and-destruction told me last night
When did my brother decide to? I wonder
What is that inescapable recurrent feeling
Of “but I didn’t decide!”
And why am I more afraid of this than anything else?
Because we did, we always do.
How do people fall asleep walking,
Living in a glass box of their own making
Whose ceiling feels uncomfortably low
Though you can see out of it,
It feels like you’re crushed, gasping for air, no less.
If we’re all so enlightened, so disillusioned, so jaded—
And we know we made it ourselves,
of course we did,
who else could have?
Then why can’t I get out?
How is it that it seems everyone helped pull me in here, but no one wants to help pull me out? My brother’s sad eyes say this.
When I know that no one but me closes that door—
And no one can fling it back open in disgust and disbelief
Only me,
Only me
Only him,
Only him
dead silence
Now I know
Why loneliness universally haunts
But what will the walls of his empty perfect suburban townhouse whisper
When the family he built and suffered daily numbness to bring to the world
Is gone
What language but silence will the walls speak?
A silence so strong,
Only a hollow holler could make it go away
Wake all the neighbors.