One Last Thing, Before I Go

*This will be my last post on this blog

I'm sorry for the way that I treated Yóu, Yóu deserved so much better.

Yóu loved me so completely, and Yóu deserved someone who loved Yóu as much as Yóu loved them. I couldn't be that person. I'm sorry I was late, as always. It sounds like I'm fishing--I'm not, I told myself I would never say anything, for Yóur sake. But then Yóu stopped being with me, even when Yóu were with me, and Yóu stopped looking at me in that same way Yóu always did, and Yóu didn't sound the same when Yóu talked to me, and I knew Yóu didn't love me anymore, so Yóu can't be that hurt by what I need to say, it can't be that big of a deal to Yóu, right? So I feel like it's safe to say it, and I hope Yóu understand, and I hope Yóu aren't mad. I really do think it was what was best for Yóu. I just want Yóu to know the truth, I think I owe it to Yóu. And to be honest, it's killing me to keep in. You need to exhale to inhale. And I'm in desperate need to inhale.

But, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to tell Yóu, I've spent the last few weeks drafting and re-drafting this, but nothing said what I wanted it to, I wish I could just say it to Yóu. But it's too much for me to explain, I don't think the words would find their way out, so I took the lyrics to one of my favorite songs (yes, it is by one of Derrick Brown's bands) and changed a few things about them. And I know that Yóu deserve a lot more than this, but this is all that I have, there are so many things that I want to say to Yóu, so many things that I should have told Yóu, so many things I never want Yóu to know. I don't know how to say any of it.

I'm sorry for this. I'm sorry for everything. I can't apologize enough. I'm sorry I can't say what I want to, what I always should have.

Hold, hold fast the feeling, yeah its coming,
is this the feeling that Yóu wanted?
And I can't sleep 'cause my castle's haunted,
how I twist inside and wonder
if someone as good as Yóu is coming.

Oh, and when they're not?
I wanted to tell Yóu to reach me.
And I'll open up
if someone can teach me
that signal Yóu were trying to send me-
it was love, 
but I couldn't take it Dear.

I cannot sleep in these pill bottle years.
Oh, I know Yóu worked so hard
to find the love
in abandoned parking lots,
as the snow fell I rested my head on Yóu
and Yóur chewed up fingernails
I watched the snow land on Yóur eyelash
and Yóu said what if We fail?

Not if we hold on and sit here like idiots,
not if we sit still like smoking frozen idiots,
to find the signal
You were trying
to send me-
it was love,
but I couldn't take it Dear.

Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.
Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.
Goodbye. Goodbye.

Yóur long gaze,
Yóur blue eyes,
Yóur kindness.

The pine tar
in my heart
it's death grippe,

Yóur moonlight my only supporter,
Yóu are love.

What was I hiding from?
Oh tell me Dear, what am I hiding from?
Oh tell me Dear,
what was I afraid of?



       With all that I have,

                    Róah

There are so many things I want to say, so many things I should have said, so many things I never want you to hear. 

Don't cut unless I say cut

Keep the camera rolling. Nate would you get a wide angle shot from the balcony on the other side of the road? No, on second thought come closer lets do a close up, actually, just do what ever you want just keep me off center. Let's give it to them straight this time.

I keep running into old childhood friends and they're always telling me how they've just been accepted to medical school or they're about to get their MBA or they've just received a scholarship to some university, and I'm still struggling to get out of my bed in the morning. The past three nights I've tried to make a list of all the reasons to get up in the morning, to go to work, to eat, to get sober, all the reasons not to crash my car, all the reasons to continue to survive and let me tell you, it's not impressive, it's got two items on it.

So I'm writing this outback behind my work and I've just finished my cigarette, it was one of those sage colored ones Soley told me I needed to try. And to my left is a man with blonde hair and some scruff--he's and ex-heroin addict-- and he's wearing brown hiking boots and smoking some type of camel cigarette and he tried to start a conversation with me but I'm no good at that. I'm not really sure what in trying to say here, I guess it's nothing, I'm just trying to give it to you straight. Where I am in life, how insignificant my existence is. This has become routine. So I've stopped drinking and I've stopped smoking pot and I've stopped using all chemicals and substances. And I'm trying to get better, I'm trying to focus on the positive and focus on my breath and the way the mountains look at night time when there's a full moon, and in struggling. But I think I'll be okay.

I don't like the people I work with, I'm terrified of becoming like them. I'm losing all desire for a real future for myself, I'm losing my appetite. I'm sick of putting off and putting it pretty and making people work to understand what I'm saying, what I'm trying to get of my lungs, so here it is: I'm not happy. And I'd like to change but it's far too difficult to wake in the morning.
 

We like, ya know, almost dated right?

I told you, didn't I my dearest? I told you that that demon would die, I told you that you would find someone, that they would love you as much as you love them and you'd be happy and you'd look back and wonder why?  You won't see what you once did.

And I'm happy for you. Hold on to him tight, he fits in  the cracks of your wood frame, and that's hard to come by.

Let me buy coffee some time.

Shit, Autumn

I can't explain it, but I should start with me being drunk and not crying as I'm reading through every conversation that I have documented, all the miserable drunk nights of your's, the fear of marriage, the ambition and excitement of trips to Europe and Northern Africa, all the times you told me you couldn't stand him, the fear in my feet of going where they wanted right beside yours. There's this thing that doesn't seem right with what happened, you dropping off and my mental state growing worse. There's all these things that my brain doesn't do, all these things that my hands don't register, I can't seem to figure out if it's my heart or something else because I can't seem to connect on any level with other humans, and the only time I ever really have was with you, and maybe that's why my jeans are still sewn with threads of your hair maybe that's why I bite my nails, maybe that's why I can't wipe the smell of you from my clothes, maybe that's why I'm drunk, maybe I've fucked up everything.

There was this conversation that we had, it started because you were telling me things and I wasn't remembering them and you told me that I had been acting "cloudy/weird" lately, and for some reason in my post-drunkeness that seems so fucking important. Like it was just the beginning of my personal destruction, like you were helping me find myself, crawl out of this cave I call home and when you cut me off, all progress was cut off, like fuck me, all I want is to revisit your old blogs, the ones where you called yourself Penelope, the ones that broke my heart but gave me hope.

There was this one conversation that we had, in the middle of it you told me not to write about it, but I'm going to write now: I was drunk and just wanted to talk to you, hear your voice but I didn't want you to know how drunk I was, I told you "happy birthday" and you thought I was your kid brother, and I was just wanted to tell you that I don't feel the same as I used to, but I feel far worse, I just wanted to tell you that I'd do anything to see you again, but I settled for curiosity on why he felt the way he felt about me in the beginning. I have the conversation written down in my notebook.

There was this one conversation that we had, you were drunk on wine and I wanted to see you but I was seventeen and I didn't have a driver's license, I told you to do what your hands and eyes and legs and feet and chest wanted to do, clearly it was to cut me off, get married without ever planning on telling me.

There was this one conversation that I had with myself, it went like this:

Go home and go to sleep, you'll wake up hungover but you'll wake up.

For Penelope

Susan never fell in  love with me;
She fell in love with the way I write about you.

Rum

Hungover on the twenty-first of  December, my fingers taste like cigarettes and for some reason I'm reading her kid sister's blog, scrolling through pieces of my own poems, reading a re-post of "Into The Thicket" that has the spacing all fucked up, the computer screen is a terrible thing for a hangover, but my curiosity kept me looking. And every now and then I felt like I was getting glimpses of three years back, glimpses of a time when my mind didn't need to be consumed by substance to get me through the night, or the day. I'll be back tonight, or maybe tomorrow morning with more rum.

What I really want to know is: Does she have any idea that every one of them is about her sister? And maybe what I want to know even more is: Does her sister know that they're about her?

My Lovely Friend

I'm happy for you.

Driving.

For far too long I have kept our conversation from August 11th in my chest. You were probably cold and maybe a little tired, and I was drunk (and sad), very drunk (and very sad). And afterwards I thought that I had fucked us up. I thought that I maybe could have had a chance, because you told me that you had felt the same, you said "I did too." and this whole time I've thought of it from my heart, from my hands, from the feeling of you against me.


               But, I seem to have forgotten one thing: I never told you how I felt. So, you lied (fuck you for lying). You never felt the same way about me, you never loved me, you never thought you loved me, you never kept your pulse for me. But, you liked me, in a junior high sort of way. I was a substitute, a temp.

You kept my pulse, You and nothing else.

But I would never stoop so low as he did, I would never threaten you with that.

                                                                                                                                But-

Calm the fuck down, everything will be okay.

He didn't say that, He didn't say any of it. But, i did.

He didn't stick around, but i did.

He wasn't there for You, but i was,

He said He'd kill himself if He couldn't be with You; i said i'd live for you, because that's what You asked me to do.

But, it's not like it matters anymore. You made Your choice. And You gave Him credit for the things that i did, for the things that i said. So fuck it, it doesn't matter to You, pretend that it was Him. 

i'll be here, waiting.