Out Of Sight

It feels as though I have not a single word left that could sound beautiful. What I sense as I drift. The chill from the window ledge, the dry scent of tobacco, and the sunlight threading through your hair. The blood in the whites of your eyes, more fierce than ever. Iris, you are beautiful. More so than my poems that suffocate me.

But I loved. Before I could feel, before I could truly nestle into the state you perpetually resented. But I loved, and then he was gone. I was gone. My tobacco is never enough for me to stay by this window for long.

Get up, you too. Stand, even if you go nowhere, stretch yourself. Leave marks with your fingers that may merge, merge, merge– and become a memory of mine when you’re gone.

But don’t you leave; it was I who left. I had left. My tobacco was gone, and my entire being was ablaze.

White is silent; white consumes. What it did as I left was a flow. Then it no longer burned me. For I had swallowed all the pain. But you did not love my satiability. “When you’re hungry, when you are stripped of resistance, you do not think,” you said. “You feel. Feel.”

But you did not anticipate.

Iris, you are beautiful, but you do not fit within my perception with your truths. Not falsehood, not error—not as simple as difference. You are far away, distant when I am wrapped in white. Life is filled with distances.

I thought I would vanish when my tobacco ran out. But here I am. In the white. My blood is orange from the light. If you expect something more proper, silence me. You won’t, but a suggestion, slight.

My poetry was stolen. That is why my breath, capable of these sentences, remains. But only a few remain to be spent.

I am not drowning, yet my blood is getting lost. Let it mark my path behind me.

drip

drip

drip, an orange.

From the streetlamp. The car illuminated too. And something in the shadows. My something.

I do not scatter what is left of you; I will not let them go. Whatever you said and did, you remain here, in my being.

One day, I stood on the window ledge. I realized you did not like it when I stood there, but what else could I do? I could not leave then, for my tobacco was not finished, and the misshapen cigarette I had carelessly rolled smoldered between my lips.

I have compressed my life into a metaphor too many times, but I will not do so now.

And I am leaving. My blood flows, but what you said does not flow from within me.

Feel,

feel,

feel your song.

No, I do not wish for it to hurt. Let me go. Let me withdraw from the peace of this sea before me, more a witness to my solitude than even you.

To how I left those beside me alone, with their pain.

To how I made their hearts skip across the water.

To the angry shouts and the photos that were never taken in those moments.

That is why the realization that everything of mine is an illusion, grand or small. And behind me, in this light, only appears as blue.

"It doesn’t matter," you would say, but I did not let you. When you believed I did not feel, silence became easier.

"I understand. I’ll try."

"I understand, we’ll talk later."

"I understand." Even if understanding is impossible, believe. Even if believing is foolish what harm is there in standing beside the fools just once?

I wanted to disappear where the hearts I skipped melted and merged with the water. To disappear, truly. My body should wedge itself between two rocks, unable to find its way to the surface, so that you may remain hopeful.

One without hope cannot write. That is where your perception misjudged me. While I was trying to cleanse myself of all interventions and no longer wait for my impact to be zeroed out, did you choose not to see the things that lost their meaning to me? No, that was your fallacy alone. I bow my head to it and get lost, with nothing left but acceptance. The time for thinking and judgment has passed, but you can still rule over lives.

I will get lost, and you will hope. Words can still open to death or life.

I will get lost. And you will hope. Perhaps one day, I will feel, as you wish.

I will get lost. That will bring me happiness. When I am lost, you will stretch and fit within my frame, but this time I will not press the shutter and will save us from at least one illusion.

When I am lost, one extra happiness, at worst, will remain, I know. The belated joy of living that I couldn't die when he was gone.

You, stretch now; my tobacco has run out, he is gone. Be a memory between the two rocks. Forget my bones, I will be the hope in your future. These bones, these muscles, covered with skin, brought only nausea.

No one ever needed mine; you sing the song.

Let me not hear it.