Letter to Grandfather, Fifteen Years Undone

Grandfather, can you provide me with some perspective? My soul is on fire and I can’t dampen the flames. I’ve been told that you were there many times before, so you must understand how this feels. It’s a brutalizing silence that rings aloud in my ears for hours on end. The unease of it all is deafening beyond imagine. I understand that life is just about wasting time, but this existential weight is something else. In the past few months, I have been wrung dry. My core is dehydrated and in abject need of recovery. The air outside is solid with pollution, but the stagnant clouds in here are a hundredfold worse. I’ve been coughing up blood for weeks and I don’t know if it’s my own. Could someone else be living on inside of my sternum? Please light a torch for me if you receive this message. I can still picture you in your favorite chair with your thin grey hair pulled back. The reverberation of your chuckle doesn’t seem far away even though it’s been fifteen years. I am clearly carrying on with a jigsaw piece of you in my bones. Well, I didn’t intend to bring about this maelstrom either. It just all came falling down in an uncontrollable wash. Now there is absolute regret with little sign of absolution in sight. All of this was a mistake. All of this was a paralyzing drama gone horribly wrong. You and I both understand this. At least I can be certain of this. If only we could convince the others.   

Without Harmony

I walked out to the ocean, out to the place where the firmament meets the sand. The overcast sky slouched overhead like an unwelcome obligation. The crisp air was punching needles into my ruddy face as I thought about life and I pondered death. There were so many roads that led to this point, so many quiet evenings in serene dominion. The water brushed up against my tired shoes as I thought up a typhoon about how it all crumbled to pieces. The tiny ripples looked so welcoming.

I broke a promise that I made five years ago. Since the alarm went off, I’ve been sleeping in a wormhole in our bed. Time itself has turned into a burden of city stone.  And I am going to pay the price for the rest of my mournful days. Fifty days and fifty nights in seclusion cannot unroot the paramount depletion of harmony. The breaking point is tearing up my mind. The uncertainty is devouring my will to keep pacing along this beach.

Maybe it’s time to dive? Joy and desire have dwindled down to this. Without symmetry, the struggle just seems like too much to bear. 

From Heartburn to Nowhere

Staring at the walls in silence is beginning to make me lose my mind. Am I still falling or have I hit rock bottom? In this state, I can’t quite tell. Somehow the reins still appear to be slipping. The hour of birth is soon approaching, so kill me please if I manage to get through it. This has not been the year that I would have ever wanted. The clouds turned to rust while the weeds became so overgrown that I could not see. Blindness is not bliss. This is a razor fact. There is only love in the end to satiate your pain and although it is often false, when it is direct, nothing on earth compares to it nor does anything else matter. Before the buildings came down, everything was starkly simple. There was a moment before the tragedy when our feet were resting on the table in peace. Now we are both licking our wounds. I am responsible for yours and you dumped salt onto mine. Has the score been evened out yet? All of the explanation is devouring my insides now that that the whole fucking world knows about our problems. Can we return to the electric place where we naturally began? Would you ever be able to give me your hand again? There never was anyone else who you loved more or who loved you as much. Somehow I know that you understand this too. Just because I put a blade into your heart doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be there to help you recover. The fact of the matter is that I put a blade in our collective hearts, but I am trying to convalesce beside you. The blood in our veins drips in unison because I understand you just as I am understood in return. At the bottom of my charred conscience, I feel your pulse. You can try to wash it off, but it’s indelible. You can try to burn it down, but it’s underneath the skin. You can try to cover it up with something else, but it refuses to be erased. The faint meter of history renders us as flecks of debris in the field, but our desires are not yet buried beneath the wheels. Do you hear the train whistle blowing in the distance? I hope that you do. It’s still there every night even though you are missing. The tracks are humming with an articulate warmth. Despite this meager calm, there is distance in more ways than one. Time, I feel, is becoming an adversary. The crowds in the street dissolve. The faces in the club become shadows. Each interaction without you is some kind of sinister encounter. I feel my heart and my guts on fire. There is no reason to carry on. The morning alarm is a pestilence. The evening routine is like a slow suicide. The only comfort is sleep and sleep is like death, so why can’t it just evolve into what it’s meant to be? With no letters, no phone messages, no whispers and no place to rest my bones, I feel the unrelenting pangs of heartbreak without pause. Help me please. These words traverse from my fading blood cells to nowhere.