takowrites...sometimes

  Where are all the people going to? Why is everyone marching determinedly in that one direction? I am trying to follow, I am, but these heavy slow feet get caught up in the mud and I am slipping, falling down, down into the squelchy depths. Every effort I make to get up fails, my limbs are useless limp noodles attached to my body; I cannot move them. Where are they going? Why can't I follow? Please everybody, anybody, somebody, just wait for me, I am coming. Please do not leave me here stumbling around in the mud which I notice is colored a strange russet. Horrified I see it is also blood; all the blood from every wound I have ever had. I am drowning in myself. When I open my mouth to scream that mixture of mud and blood wrestles its way into me and my mouth is filled with the metallic taste of blood. This is what it feels like, to die. The crowd does not, cannot hear me even though I am making a racket and a mess of myself. I am dying in front of them, why can they not hear me? I...

Who am I? What am I? Where has my spirit gone to? - Desperation and anger have me banging at your shopkeeper's door. I have no receipt and the loud bold letters on the door declare that there are no refunds or exchanges but I am persistent. I am screaming, and my voice has been scrubbed so raw it sounds more like a labored croak. I can see you standing behind the impenetrable glass, pretending not to see me. Give me back my life, my heart, that kiss, that first embrace, that first union of our sweaty young bodies breaking their innocence. Please, give it all back to me.  

  The day you left me, I wept like you had died. It had felt like being on the most wonderful ride of my life, and in the middle of the exhilarating thrill and rush, being cast off without explanation and watching the ride carry on without me. I tried to keep myself together but I was already falling apart. I did not lie when I told you that you meant everything to me. I suddenly found myself alone in the wilderness without my helpful guide, and the first night I could not sleep well, exposed to the brutality of a life without you. I tossed and turned and asked myself a million questions, overanalyzed every interaction we'd ever had and blamed myself for allowing you to stop loving me.  When I closed my eyes I saw my future with you, I saw the big airy house with the eccentric furniture, the couch we would both sit on while we each worked, making our own art and I saw the children; the two bright wonderful children, the physical manifestations of our devotion to each other. I ...

I am afraid the grave is too shallow, too small, hands bloody, I wipe my forehead. The grave is too small for me to bury all I felt for you.

Pull the drapes across the windows, close the windows and shut the door.  A fine layer of dust is already starting to gather in the house where my love for you lived. I cannot take anything with me, lest by mischance I carry you along. I must leave the furniture we gathered in the house, though I built it with my hands that are stained, rough, chapped bruised and bloody now from the days I spent carving the wood, polishing it until it shone.  I must leave the knives in the kitchen sink, unwashed as they are, already showing the first signs of their losing battle with the rust. The life is bleeding out of the house, and the effort to keep it alive has left me soulless, I am pouring myself into this bottomless bucket, hoping to fill it, but the house dies without you in it. Now I must go, with only the clothes I wore when I first came here on my back. I go in search of some other house somewhere, where I may lay down my tools and find rest.