Dreamcatchers

Everyone ages differently.

Sometimes you become 50 at five years old, watching double a edged blade take away memories you’ll never know. Holding flowers in one little chubby hand and a blue toy truck in the other, it makes the confusion feel a little more clear. Crisp suits are for weddings but you wore your favorite one, Daddy would’ve been proud. It took so long for the fog to stop rolling around in your head, but you finally understood, band-aids don’t heal all the wounds. God can’t bring him back no matter how much you miss him, and you don’t have your three wishes to make.

Sometimes you find your 16 at 25. Laced in blankets and tights, you dye your hair all the colors of your favorite sunsets and stay up too late for your time. Mounds of laundry and missed phone calls, you can’t keep down a job and  you’re too impulsive for anyone to want to stick around.  basking in unsureness, you’re lacking self discipline, looking for a rock to hang onto. You don’t answer your door when somebody knocks and peers through curtains at 2 pm on a  lazy Saturday, rebelling for the satisfaction, roaming for the thrill. You’re still finding yourself, even if everyone else says you don’t have the time.

Sometimes you meet 30 at 19, mistakes led to love. Working overtime, frazzled all the time and you haven’t washed your hair in three days. Giving up all your other dreams because she’s your biggest one. Sometimes you cry into the dishes at night, moonlight reflecting into your eyes and exhaustion highlighting your eyes. But when she laughs it makes your day and when she says I love you, you know you’ve altered her whole universe, even with no one’s help. When she took her first steps, you wished someone else had noticed but she was there for you to smother with all your kisses. When you replaced your wine for apple juice, nothing had ever tasted sweeter.

Sometimes you come across 14 at 60 shifting through old boxes and looking at faded photographs. Staring into reflections wondering where youth went, when did lines become so permanent and when did they start standing up when you wanted to take a seat. The glitter in your hair and the life inside your eyes, what you would do to be there again. Trying on old dresses, they don’t fit the way they used to but you’re spinning around trying to feel beautiful, don’t you know, you still are.

Sometimes…sometimes there just isn’t enough time so you walk from 1 to 100 and back all the time, trying to fit what you have left in all these small spaces.

We stand through fountains inside
Waterfalls.
Pointless,
Exhausting out the time
Till there’s no damn words.
You’re always telling me you’re paper thin,
So why aren’t you flinching?
At the knives I’m throwing back your way.
I make up the embers in a dying fire,
Blowing through the wind,
I sting your eyes.
And we stand through secret walls,
Casting shadows
In the dim lights
Of this pain
You say you don’t feel,
While you bleed
Into my arms.
Your exploding through the smoke,
Falling to the sky,
To try and be something,
Anything
But broken
Like this world.
We stand through battle fields.
Holding guns to each other’s throats,
I keep saying shoot me first.
Your afraid of being a coward
So your holding your breath
Let it go,
And scream your swears to the raging sky
Breathe.
There’s
Only angels
Tonight.

I’ve fallen in love

with these disintegrating picture frames

with the unvarnished truth

that these dazzling people,

their sparkling outfits

and ravishing beauty.

are perishable.

Their glowing faces

will only be admirable for a while,

until the brain-washed folks see

that we have been mistaking centuries of ordinary humans

for the gods of pretty.

If we were all bones and no skin,

would you chase after these unexceptional things?

Like you do.

These masks and covers,

open them up,

would you?

Instead of staring at the surfaces,

gasping at the beauty of the things

that have some ugly underneath.

Can you tell me you would fall in love

with the ugly underneath

that everyone has,

like you have with the “pretty” on top?

I used to take my time doing the things I loved.

Now I remember the things I used to love.

I used to smile at the sadness.

Now I frown at the happiness.

Is there adulthood?

When sometimes mothers want to hold their children’s hands

for their own comfort.

And people cry in cubicles underneath bad office lights,

silent tantrums

over sillier things

than losing candy.

Is there adulthood?

When people play in parks,

pretending to look after toddlers

as not to look out of place.

Parents take naps

after putting their babies to sleep.

Is there adulthood?

When people binge on pizza,

with no one telling them to stop.

Midnight stomach aches

over ice cream cakes,

with banana milkshakes.

And men fight

over who gets the thing that’s the colour blue

or the thing that’s the colour white.

Is there adulthood?

When adults

are as lost

as the boys

Shooting guns without bullets,

as delusional as the girls

drinking out of empty tea cups,

as helpless

as the babies trapped in their cribs.

Tell the stars to stop burning

and the world to stop spinning.

Tell the voices to fade out

and the moon to take a nap.

Tell the walls to start closing in

and the TV to close its flickering lights.

Tell the clocks to stop time

and the books to close their pages.

Tell the sun to become cold

and let me lie here

to watch the world end.

Unspoken goodbyes hang in the air, incomplete thoughts lost in a frazzled state of mind. Flashbacks; wet streets filled with slush and snow, the twinkling lights bringing life to the mountains of untouched snow. I watched them become a thousand crystals in a palace made of white walls. I used to slip on mischievous hidden icy patches, grasping at air to steady my foreshadowed fall, thinking that was the way it would always be. I used to barrel down hills in plastic sleds, laughing at the demise of fallen children and trying to heat my frozen ears. I loved tasting the unfavourable coolness that was my winter wonderland. I used to make imprints on the ground so I could pretend like I was an angel and the protruding sun was my halo-fast forward-angelic’s the last word that resembles me. I stole food like I was the FBI and delicious delicacies were serial killers. I’d read novels under covers at odd hours of the night to enter private worlds under covers, devouring words like they were a precious life. I’ve been staying loyal to inexpensive coffee shops, sipping bitter feelings under trees that have been growing for too long. I’ve been holding in the weight of my world on the tip of my tongue, volcanoes erupting in my bones, walking on coals not hot enough to make me walk me any faster. I’m procrastinating my life, waiting for miracles to sparkle through my vision and no, they aren’t what I need. I’m feeling these bittersweet remains of an atmosphere I’d never take back except to gain back what I never had. The melodies of memories are running through my head, the past and the future keep trying to flee through my subconscious, they call themselves renegades. The only chains I’m ready to hold are those of the swing set, time’s running on but I’m still here, whirling through the wind looking for tunnels to my best days. My therapy’s dark humour and my saviour’s the things I decided not to say. I’m better off on street corners and walk-in closets, living in paradise.

Home never felt like home till I had to leave.

I wish I could sit in front of the stars

and watch their shining edges,

flip through the vanished hopes

of everyone who

ever thought it would be a good idea

to have faith in the brightness

of the universe.

I wonder if I would see myself

up there.

Come to me

I’m demolished

inhaling my crippled imagination

in a translucent lie.