f-e-celler

[f-e-celler]

i’ve fallen victim to haunted houses and cracked windows and peeling paint and things that live where they do not belong.

things that stay in one place too long.

the light under the door is always there. i wonder if thats the light everyone is always talking about, you know the one. i dream about it mostly, i can only find my way back to it if i’m lucky, and, my friend, i’m not that lucky.

i feel called to places that don’t belong to me, and i want to live in them, but not forever. i never want to stay in one place too long(it’s complicated). my therapist would say that’s a control-based issue i need to work out, but i’ll get there eventually. when i want to. when i feel like it. one day i will find it. one day i will reach the door.

i can feel it buzzing, in my mind somewhere.

humming low, always reminding me it’s there. as if it’s taunting me.

[f-e-celler]

feeling very conflicted about poem prompts. on one hand, it’d be nice to have some sort of idea going into writing something, on the other…writing whatever shit pops into my brain feels like such a big fuck you to the other hand/rules, so, you know.

[f-e-celler]

un péché ou une folie à deux.

they say not to blame yourself for not knowing something before you learn it. naivety is its own bliss that allows you to live in a dream, the curtain over your eyes, the sheath over the blade.

but what happens when you have to wake up; when you're ripped from your dream into a waking nightmare?

you've drawn the blade and shredded the curtain before my eyes revealing my sin as what it is, what it really was all along.

eyes. eyes, this whole thing is about them. those stupid little round things in our skulls. yours find mine, mine find yours, over and over again and neither of us knows who’s looking first at this point but that doesn’t matter. as long as i’m looking. as long as you're looking. are you seeing me? are you really seeing me? what are you seeing? what the fuck do you see?

i shouldn’t have let it get this far, i should have stopped it long before it got to this. but i didn’t, because i’m selfish, and so are you. this whole thing goes both ways.

how can i stop you from looking, anyway? last i checked it wasn't the one who is seen's job to pluck out the eyes of the see-er. i would, though, if you pluck out mine as well (reminder: we're both guilty here, but you are more-so than i. at least that is something.)

[f-e-celler]

synonym for something.

oh to lose what you don’t know you lost.

what was it..?

you’ll just know it’s missing, but you’ll never know what. but then if you do figure it out, it’s not enough, and it’s too much.

no, it’s not enough to have lost something but to have to find what it was, to go through the process all over again.

to dig up the body and bury it.

a second funereal.

a private interment between you and that of which you’ve lost. memories are similar to that, only in this case it’s more like said body just falls out of thin air in front of you, splayed on the ground, the grief hits you like a truck but you also have to find somewhere to bury it. it can’t be here in the supermarket, or there on the side of the road.

these funerals are inconvenient at worst, but what can you do but lay them to rest. i’ve dug a thousand graves in my lifetime and i’m sure there’ll be more, but i’m getting tired of loss.

i’m getting tired of dead things and things that have long since decayed. i’m tired of burying idols of things i’m not responsible for. that i shouldn’t be responsible for. and of having to bury them alone.

i envy people who don’t care as much as me so often i can sometimes trick myself into believing i don’t, but then it happens and i always have to find the right shovel to use, and the appropriate flowers to lay when i’m done.

[f-e-celler]

i offer you my hands and you say you do not want them. that you wouldn’t know where to keep them, and utter something about the back corner of your closet.

i offer you my heart, and you say no, it’s too much.

and you don’t mean it in a way that cares about the fact that i’m willing to give you something so sacred. you don’t want it because you mean it carries too much. it always has and always will. i don’t want any part of you, i do not want to look at it and be reminded of you.

so instead i give you my emptiness. my shame, my countless sleepless nights and all the great lakes worth of hope i always had in you. i give you these things to be kept in the same part of your brain that used to shut my body down and render it uncontrollable when i was reminded of you.

i think what you mean is, i don’t want you as anything else, why would i want you as a burden? what you mean is, i don’t want to feel any guilt for the pain i’ve caused you.

i give you the fact that i am able to move on from you. that you are replaceable, and that i will forget about you, over time.

you gave me my curse years ago, and now it is yours. i am finally free of it.

[f-e-celler]

mein körper war eine schattenbox und du zerschmettertest das glas innen ich.

if there was one place you could break into and rob without anyone ever knowing, where would it be, i’d asked you but i never got my answer. you put the crowbar in the trunk.

you keep the knife tucked in the inside of your jacket and say, it’s just in case.

you drive and light one up, we get to the parking lot and you laugh as you get out and stumble. we get in, get some of the jewels and all the solid gold chains and we leave.

you’re driving and say, oh one more stop. real quick. this will answer your question.

you stop at a old house and go inside, crowbar in hand. i wait for you but you never come out, so i go in, worried about you. i should have been more worried. more wary. i didn’t see it coming, but i should have.

three days later i wake up, my head feeling like a bomb about to go off. my hands bound in gold chains.

there’s an ache in my chest, and at first i figure oh, the pain of betrayal, but i look down and i see the knife. the handle lodged in the space between my ribcage, and i laugh.

i finally get it. this was it, this was your answer.

[f-e-celler]

10.4.20

[f-e-celler]

i’m not a doctor but i have a phd in seeing through people, and in my professional opinion, you’re full of shit.

you knew. you knew what it was that was coming. you always do, even if you think you don’t.

you can run for miles and get around destroyed churches in less time than it takes to say a prayer, but that doesn’t stand out much when you trip over an old photograph, a letter crumpled into a ball on the ground and you fall face-first into the dirt.

clean yourself up, you’re a mess, they say.

yeah, well who’s gonna pay for it all? not you. not them. takes a lot more than tapping some buttons on a screen and writing words that you don’t really mean. that never really fixes anything, it’s just like sticking a bandaid on a broken leg.

like anyone else is doing any better, either. you’re all lying to yourselves, and all the shit you’ve buried beneath your foundation of fake smiles and the forty-seven self-help books you own is going to explode one day like a volcano. all over your house, your town; everyone will see it. but if it goes to your brain first, well, that’s what’ll really ruin everyones day. month. “how’d he die?” “oh, his head just exploded.”

let’s face it, nobody wants to clean that up.

but if you’re honest with yourself, let it go when it starts, no one minds as much, it makes you more genuine. more real. (i’m as real as it gets, baby, but don’t take everything so seriously.) know where your head is, keep it there.

that way you won’t get disappointed, and neither will anyone else.

[f-e-celler]

your love is easy. it’s carefree and pure.

my love is messy. a tangled web clinging to the figure of an idea. always all-consuming, but never consuming the right thing.

maybe i’m not doing it right.

tell me how you do it.

tell me how to feel.

this feels like another false positive, like the gun filled with old confetti i keep in the dresser drawer until i finally know i’m ready to pull the trigger, but when i do nothing happens.

there’s no hole in the ceiling. just an ugly mess that’s going to take forever to clean up.

i’m not calling you a liar, but your l o v e is looking more unrealistic by the hour.

[f-e-celler]

9.7.20

[f-e-celler]

it starts like this.

you get sick of me. you get sick of yourself. then you get sick of everything else. you get angry, you get sad, then you can’t get out of bed.

it adds up, see. makes sense. if only you could make some sense out of yourself.

you ignore the sunrises and you ignore the morning doves perched on the telephone wires, but there are no morning doves. there are no wires but the ones wrapped around your throat. you’re dreaming. but you’re awake.

the crickets have all died and the dull hum goes on forever between your ears, makes everything else even more wearisome. it’s all boring.

it’s a set, low pitched ringing and the whole world is just going along with it, and you just want it to end. something to snap you out of it, or snap everything else out of it.

it’s all nothing. you are nothing. you’re dreaming. no, you’re awake. it’s a dream where you‘re awake and you can’t be bothered to try.

[f-e-celler]

[f-e-celler]

fill in the _____.

choose whatever you put in the gun carefully.

two crucifix shaped bullets.(one for each wrist. tell me this sounds familiar.) 

justifiability, be it reasonable or not. it usually is if you’ve already made up your mind.

the stained glass shatters in from the windows when you shove me onto the broken marble floor. the glass sticks to my skin like freckles from a crystallized rainbow. am i pretty now? is this good enough?

the answer is always no. you use the bigger pieces to cut away the wings, just two. leave the rest, who needs eight wings anyway, right? 

the angels looking down upon us hold their voices tightly between their teeth and watch with intrigue, the unfolding scene of dismemberment of one of their own, but also a fraud. just barely blasphemous.

you drag them out into the graveyard, and i crawl behind you. you bury my wings side by side and tell me your love dies here(it goes either way). then, you spit on the grave you created.

i dig them up early sunday morning but there’s nothing in the grave but dirt. the angels finally cry with me.

[f-e-celler]

must be nice knowing you’re a curse and a blessing all in one, not many people can live up to that.

i say i love you.

i say it like it will hold meaning forever and even after, and it will, don’t you worry your pretty little head.

but it won’t. now isn’t that something? i’ll love you in the way i love the idea of your hands around my throat and mine around yours, but i won’t grip yours as tight. the only time you’ll ever let me near you, close enough that our blood mixes and flows through each others veins like a boiling, freezing stinging mix of chemicals until they start to collapse.

and you’ll never hold back, i end up blacking out and forgetting about it until next time. in the moment right before my vision blurs out, and i let go of you as if your skin suddenly gives off the energy of a thousand suns; the bright burn of realization, this has happened before. (you’re here again. again.)

oh, dear, but you’re so pretty, i’d let you get away with just about anything. if you were the sun i wouldn’t complain whenever it blinded me—oh, wait. you don’t have to be the sun to do that.

you’re owed some violence. it’s due, as they all say. you have to be allowed to get away with some bad shit if you’re good enough. “oh, she was always so kind...of course she got upset a couple of times, here or there. who cares?” but that’s just it, isn’t it? who cares.

it means nothing in the end. it means something.

maybe that i care(d), or was foolish enough to, again. how many times will i burn before i actually feel it?

[f-e-celler]

i’ve stapled all my love notes to the ceiling, you’ll find them when you find me. after the sky shatters and the earth falls beneath us. they’ll drift out the broken windows and into the atmosphere that’s crashed down upon us and float there.

my eyes will be hollow by then, empty and revealing nothing. i may not even remember you, and you sure as hell won’t remember me.

but i hope you will even if i don’t; if this pen-scribbled mess is for anything, it’s for your eyes to read, everyone else be damned.

i’ve written myself a sorry fool for them, but for you.....for you it’s everything. over and over again i’ve rephrased and translated it in every split-second emotion i’ve ever fought. i only hope you feel every single word like an ache in your chest, because compared to mine, that would be meaningless.

in the end it is all for nothing, because you’ll never bother coming to look for me. i know that deep down, but there is a vague, gut-twisting feeling residing within me that hopes you will.

ps: if you do happen to find these, please forgive any indiscretion implying that i loathed you. i swear it only lasted a few seconds, and it’s not like i was at fault for feeling that way, anyways. it’s not like you didn’t give me a reason not to. just know that i truly loved you at some point…and another. and maybe even before i realized it. they don’t sound too different, do they? loathe and love.

if there was a record for how much anyone could care about one person, i think i’d hold it forever, be it a curse or not.

[f-e-celler]

oh-so-typical poetry from a scorpio.

you want to know the combination for a good nicotine high?

breathe in. breathe in. fill your lungs up with intoxicated smoke and hold it until it fucking burns from where you’re trachea splits off and up to your throat. keep holding it, then let it out when you start to get dizzy or your face turns blue, or your eyes start to fade out and you’re not thinking straight anymore. who thinks straight anymore, straight is boring.

you’re so boring, you’re so boring...

you’ve been honest all along, so it’s about time i start being honest, isn’t it? i’ll breathe out as you breathe in, eyes wide and stormlike, but i won’t look at you, not anymore. you’ve proved yourself unworthy of my time and anything else relative to me, and i don’t need you. you don’t deserve me. why are you still here?

[inhale] the clock is tic tic ticking, baby. so why are you wasting so much of your precious time?

[f-e-celler]

don’t go leaping out any windows, nobody likes a martyr unless they’re worth it, and you aren’t.

where there’s love there’s always religion.

i know, because i remember looking at you like the angels when they look up at god. or like teenage girls to stories of all the heroine-like saints.

devotion. loyalty. deletion is salvation, salvation is damnation. i never deleted any of your messages, what a mistake that was. at least i don’t look at them anymore.

memory is it’s own fucking purgatory.

(damn, what a let down you were.)

i wasted my time looking up at the stars thinking they were gods until they faded into nothing. the light that burns out, the fire that dies, a pretty face that always turns out to be a lie. it’s all the same, same old same old, same new is just getting old.

i’d go find something else to believe in if there was anything left to believe in. nothing but the small things seem worth it anymore.