to my flower of the mountain

that one night when you said yes and we are out in the darkness and yes you held your head bloody and I said yes but you only laughed and stumbled in the patan streets and yes we were drunk on wine and each other and yes you were mine and I was yours and we were in the heart of a city that reached out to us like we were born for this very night and yes we were in love so we walked with our arms around each other and came home to a place we had only just made our own and on a bed we made love and yes you said because it was ours because we had made it ours like nothing else would ever make sense again so in the heavy heat of that one night as the sweat cooled on us and the electric fan was cold on our still drained bodies and we for once for after so long we held ourselves yes for in each other we found ourselves again like we were children and teenagers and our loves were new and naked and neverending and yes it was ours everything was ours as the night and the day and the sun and the moon and the stars all said yes when we kissed and when we drank ourselves dry and everything we had been holding back for years came bursting forth like a river unleashed cascading and flooding and wiping away all traces of everything in its path yes it was a love yes it was this yes it was us and we were it and yes you were me and I was you and yes you said and yes I said in every breath in every beating of my infernal heart yes it was everything we had wanted yes it is everything we have ever wanted yes it will be ours yes we will love like the world is lost because yes it is all we have and yes we are all we have and yes I will forever if yes you will forever yes this is love yes this is love

happy birthday my dearest.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow

I felt alive for a little while
But when I died
I had the time to notice
I was crushed by the weight of my own ego
But never honest enough to say it

I felt your love for a little while
But never had the guts
To give myself up
I said that I could be just what you wanted
As if I could ever keep a promise
As if I could ever keep a promise

You have eyes in every room
But you won’t see me, you won’t see me
You won’t see me walk away
Once I was
More than just a song to play
On your haunted tape
I don’t want to be away

Could have sworn
I heard you laughing in the doorway
I don’t like myself when I’m awake

I don’t like myself
When I’m awake

I go to bed in darkness and I wake to darkness. There are rats in my mind, scurrying about as if in an old, old barn, musty, black, motes of dust floating invisible in the rank air. There are worms in my eyes, burrowing deep as if into the ground, soft, loamy, warmer the further they go. There is no pain, there is only feeling. You know local anesthesia? How it numbs you and yet, you can feel the poking and the prodding. There is no, there is only discomfort.

I was young once. In my dreams, I was young once. There were no rats and no worms then. I was healthy, I was alive, I could do ten pull-ups and twenty push-ups. I had a lean body and a mind sharp like the edge of a new knife. If I had known then what I know now, would anything have been different? Can you change your future if you know what it is going to be? Or is it fate, a self-fulfilling prophecy, one you make true by trying to circumvent it? If I cut out my tongue, if I poke out my eyes, will it change anything at all?

There is always darkness to retreat to. The darkness behind my eyes as I close them to sleep. I thank the stars I haven’t yet been robbed of easy sleep, for then, I would truly go insane. Sleep remains my only refuge. I wake every morning whiling away the hours until I can go to bed. This is anomie. This is something creeping up behind me, something black, something so dark it swallows all light.

More days, I find myself opening up a bottle of wine and drinking it all. Until the rats recede into their corners and the worms emerge from their holes. It feels like spring cleaning, it feels like cutting away the fat, it feels like shaving your head, it feels like taking off your clothes. It feels like going to sleep with your eyes open.

How did you go mad, they’ll ask? Two ways, I will say, Gradually, then suddenly.

I don’t like myself when I am awake.