beneath everything else

maybe i am doomed to be haunted by some feeling i can’t quite place

some need or fulfillment that can’t be

fulfilled

the way I could or wish or will.

think back farther

maybe it was nicotine and that need is wanted to be replaced by something more physical and nothing gets the fix quite like flesh

think farther

maybe it was my own selfish attachment to the beginnings of things that felt like magic i’d never tasted magic before

think much farther

maybe i know how bad things can be and maybe i sometimes wish life had left me smoking clove cigars and drinking the nights away in some basement dreading the moment the door opens and closes for the last time, the sound of closing casket

a little more

maybe i have fallen off. maybe i don’t care or love her the way i should. i don’t write about it anymore. years of nothing. i deserve to be shamed and yelled at for not trying. maybe that will teach me to do better again. it doesn’t matter anyway.

much farther this time

maybe i should change the words, maybe my stories aren’t that great, or no one cares. maybe that word should be landed, stomped, scraped, fell, touched, searched, whatever. maybe I should take a year off.

even farther

maybe my words don’t mean anything at all. just a poem, just a poem keeps echoing in my head. maybe i never should have tried my hand or heart at poetry. not enough words, or too many instead, maybe I shouldn’t share anything at all, especially with her. maybe i should make new friends.

as far back as we can go

maybe i do have a demon in me. maybe there is something wrong. perhaps i don’t deserve to make my own decisions, or ask to be loved for who i am. maybe i shouldn’t have confided in him. maybe i’m too young to know. maybe i deserve to suffer in the silence of my thoughts, secluded from the world around me. maybe i think too much or shouldn’t at all.

reach one last time

i remember my grandma loved to read my writing. and she would write me letters. i would craft stories, carved into a sheet of paper with a blue pen (i loved blue) or red marker (i had a cherry smell one). she said that i could be anything i wanted as long as i was good. i remember watching the black fur chipmunks dance between the bushes by the sliding glass door while she drank her coffee. i remember the smell of her cooking breakfast before anyone else woke up. the feel of the plastic on a batman figurine she’d bought for me and given to me early. is this where i decided to write? or to be someone at all? to think? it may be the first time. castles and princesses. always lava. but also always secret entrance. asking innocent questions before i ever hurt more than scuffed knee or mosquitos. before i knew people you loved could hurt you too, or waste it. i still taste it, her french toast. eggs. bacon. it still remains beneath everything else. maybe i do too.

________________________

justin