Everything I would Hide

This Pandora box, full of letters, contains ethical complications.  Inside lays the combination to a secret society.  Its hidden among the everyday people trying to be all the things they aren’t.  Their attire is bare skin with their hurt disguised as magnificence.  Everyone here has their reasons but my hands only hold the wrong ones.  The darkness gathering loves my light but I’m too damaged even for the beautifully damned.  I’ve withdrawn my application after emptying each vial.  This prevailing energy contained inside these walls could change the world but instead my sensitivity hardens with its disparaging force.  Feeling the sweat of twisted pulsations, I crawl out the archway of this jaded ballroom full of brightly colored lights.  They flash to rhythms I try to intone but I collapse from the trance.  My corresponding obstacles reach overload and dry heaves are all I can produce.  Even Pandora cannot breathe underneath the malevolence she let loose.  Screams of an unknown soul remind me of how sorry I am as I kneel outside the carnal carnival.  Wearing my hood to hide, I try to survive the effects of my own personal assaults before they take over.  Hope whispers in my ear over the roar of elemental compounds but I just wish the sunrise would turn back around as I know my innocence is gone.

This has never felt good.  I’ve been waiting for it for so long that it has taken over.  Never an option, I lay dormant.  All of the reasons hold little importance to me.  The disappearance comes first but I have so many more appearances to make.  I’m ready to cash in the experiences before the final plunge.  Carrying worthless objects stored in my brain, I don’t wish you were here.  I’m supposed to rise above it all but for once I hold space.  Sing me a symphony and I’ll break your heart.  Whisper nothing and I’ll never want to part.  My overreactions are legendary.  They equal your piercing silence.

I fell from each balcony you stood on.  My arms hang around every chair you once sat in but I’m getting so tired.  Bombarded, I take a kneel instead of a stand.  I’m still in mourning.  Sadness still fills my pores.  I felt you move on as easily as the years contour my spine.  Are you awake?  You are closer but farther than I’ve ever known you to be.  I suspect I never really knew you as you remain guarded but aware of everything you caused me to be.  Blue diamonds encrust your eyes and one freckle remains in mine.  Worry sweats out of my palms and I’m still waiting for you to discover me. 

My stomach gets tight.  This precious pressure releases and I live in outstanding ways.   I sink and float between the memories of you.  Trapped in an endless sea of reoccurrences I make way to dry land.   It started in early days.  I forsook your apparent masculinity and discovered my own truth.  Reborn into a life you never wanted to be part of, I left to find myself.   I wasn’t the boy you wanted to relate to nor the man you could ever love.  I try all that I can to forget your world and name.  Your darkness remains in my shadows and I dread the daylight because it makes me see your violence.  I inflict it on myself because that’s what I learned from you.  I transcend the painful blows into self hatred and hammer your vile voiceovers into regret.  Every lingering failure has your face stamped on it as it appears and disappears from my psyche.  Your cowardice completes my desire to try everything at least once.  I limp towards the future one difficult step at a time.  I took the road that leads away from you.  I can make it without your approval and I hear something else coming for me.  It’s the independence singing and you won’t drag me back down.  My soul takes over and I create my freedom from childhood worry.  It’s over because I said it’s over.  I try to show how I feel inside but I still wear you on the outside.  Shedding my father, my inner light begins to shine through.  I just wish I could have found myself earlier.

I counter the truth, pushing actuality a little more to the left.  I halt my evolution for another day.  Your love lost, I cry ever within this.  I can’t think of anywhere else I want to be tonight.  My bed quietly weeps.  You have been gone for too long and my belated concurrence to these sentiments relentlessly impresses my soul.  We cover this condemned certainty with frivolous expressions.  I consent because we fight the years against sadness every single day and try to embrace anything before it slips away.  I dreamed the worst about you.  Took all my disappointments and channeled them into assumptions of you.  I missed you so much.  Your swift exodus quickly turned my morning into evening.  Now, I kneel because I have no feet to stand on when it comes to you.  We know the underlying truth.

Looking back, you were more of an experiment.  You quickly ignited my sensitivity but our days were numbered from the start.  This was all part of the increasing pattern that my quixotic threads weaved throughout these years.  I covered your grief admirably but the strain of your loss continued to reverberate inside your heart.  I gave a new name to the anxiety you tried to displace and I was only one day apart from continued loneliness.  The truth was right as rain and before you could look me in the eyes I was gone.  You killed me in such a minute fashion. 

My attempts to purge you from my life were adequate.  Moving on was relative when you already started the incision as another would complete the cut.  My struggled thoughts still turn to you but my senses burst warning signs.  I’ve changed over and over but the inside remains similar to our dissimilarities.  Your apologies politely dropped out of your mouth but maladroitly fell from my ears.  I wedged them into my front t-shirt pocket.  Occasionally I’ll listen to them because they bring me back to those few days of contentment before the moments of experienced happiness turned to dust.  This combined with rain created my strength but when you reach out I feel the hairline crack in my armor.  My desperation relaxes just a little but not nearly enough to make this all become real. 

Somehow I have still maintained the blame.  This journey has been a maze and I haven’t found my way out.  Inside my imagination, you were trapped in my heart.  Deep down I knew they were just wishes.  Accurate judgments dissolved those loosely bound dreams.  I always wanted to say the words out loud but instead chased youthful things.  I took a chance but didn’t quite give my everything.   Time left without recourse and I only listened to the memories.  When did we start living our lives apart?  I try to drift but my impatience drives the sense out of my mind.  How lucky you are to be an hour ahead. 

I need some conceptual beauty in my life.   Running into you, I coerce the excuses and limit myself with seemingly dubious margins.   I have no idea if the best is yet to come.   I could extend my fondness past abnormal affection but you grin from the inside and it comes out swaggering.  You show me the same curiosity as to so many others.  Your touch is perfect as it is perplexing.  It clashes with your demeanor.  I rebound from swallowing years of extreme complexities.  You simplify my contemplation into a one-dimensional need.  There never were prior commitments, only forged impressions conceived by unusual and mistaken circumstances.  Your departure was always expected but running into you is a continuous surprise.  I double up in the inside.  I must always maintain my composure around you.  I’ve played the game before and this time I elude the capture of what’s left of my heart.   The train sweeps me away as I clearly see you look back as I go.  This is easier than falling.  This is accepting on a complete level before it becomes too late.