Sometimes

Sometimes
It’s easier not to let people in
Because if all your friends are strangers,
It hurts less when they change.

There is a rift like a yawning canyon
Running between us
No sky above and darkness below
Tightrope between sides, don’t fall
Fantasy and fiction become merged in the waking dreamscape of reality
Autumn leaves fall in spring and
You change like a season out of time.
No newfound reason or rhyme
It’s just another conundrum of the everlasting
Neverfailing
Occasional
Apparent
Unusual
Nonexistent…
Sometimes.

Sometimes I feel you, like a thorn in my side
Feel cold sparks of anger, pain, heartbreak
Trickling down like blood
Sometimes you’re gone
Absolutely and completely like a dreamer in a coma
Barely shed husks of your old self
And I heal
Sometimes
I am, alone. A sea of a thousand people surrounds me and I tell my stories
To myself, to keep me company

Sometimes
I never remember having loved. Other times it’s all I can do to
Stop myself from running faster breathing harder holding longer
Jumping paces closing spaces searching faces
Till I find that one
Who makes me forget that
We all go a little crazy,
Sometimes.

And that maybe if I just take a pause and breathe a breath of fresh air
The fog will clear
And you’ll be standing there.
Like a ghost from past lives
An echo, smoke signal from extinguished fires
Light long gone but hazy smudges left on window panes where we
Pressed ourselves and made funny faces

Sometimes
I remember not knowing you
I remember breathing in and out hundreds of times a day and not thinking of you once
I remember when my hands did not miss you and my
Lips never kissed you and my soul
Did not list you
As home

Sometimes
I will sit and listen to silent ballads
Playing symphonies through treebranches
The wind the conductor and gently tossing, turning like an infant in a nightmare
And in the third movement
I will dance
All by myself
Across the tightrope between canyon walls
To show you people don’t always have to change
Sometimes.