A beautiful complexity in the stillness,
The knowledge that human life is gone
But for the flicker of a candle,
The only source of this home’s light.
Author Archives: lullingbehind
Surface
The space I occupy is desolate. My mind and my soul are missed, two separate spheres that cannot connect on the basis of biology and a lack of balance. I am left with the brain and the heart, the physical representations of the spiritual interdependence I can visualize floating away. Who are we if not our spiritual selves? Empty shells, bodies that can’t fill themselves with love and emotion as if they are grasping for a breath but shallowly inhale, never enough to make it through. Heartbreak will do that to a girl, push everything out so you can deal with the most basic issues, but it means you lose a little bit of yourself for every day that you’re missing that wholeness. We’re all drowning in life, and it’s the moments where you reach the surface that allow you to get through the moments when you want to embrace the despair. My ocean is vast, and often it is empty, leaving me alone with my thoughts, but I’ll find someone who is caught in the same current. Perhaps I can find the willpower within myself to drag each aching limb toward the oxygen of relief above, because we all must do it on our own at some point, even if it’s just during our last submerged moments. No matter what, I will no longer live a solitary life, and I will find solace in the struggle to the surface.
From A Drop Wrinkles A Wave
He can sit across from me without speaking, make eye contact without escaping from the moment, connect without wandering away from me. Somehow, in the perfect symmetry of our lives, we’ve touched at the center of our complex. Our core being joined by the untouchable, unimaginable force of the world, of this illusion called fate. The dwindling of any light outside of ourselves, forces us to focus in on what might be our ultimate demise, but releasing ourselves to the potential of a coincidence. From a drop wrinkles a wave, floating above the expectation and into what will be our reality, the singular, undeniable, shocking reality of a life united by a simple question of accompaniment. I give into this, whatever “this” may be, because for the second that I may lock eyes with him, the man sitting across from me in a somehow perfect quiet, life seems as if it’s in order. This was not an act of free will, but the universe’s joke on two individuals perfectly suited for loneliness until their spheres collided, creating an implosion of darkness and emanating a brilliance of immeasurable quality. All of this is done without the sound of action.
Facing the Door
I can feel you in the room with me. I can feel the space that you’ve invaded in my memory. I can feel you on the other side of the bed, laying on your right side, always facing the door. I can feel you snoring, and it makes me laugh a little when you stop because you wake yourself up. I can feel the emptiness of the distance between us. I always feel the painful loss, but in fleeting moments such as this, I feel like you’re back in my life. I wonder if you feel it too.
Glass Houses
I stare out from my box of glass, the only place I’ve ever called home. Roll me like dice, and see how I land on my feet. Spin me, and notice how I’m facing forward. No matter how my life is manipulated around me, I will always manage to make myself right with it. My family, my friends, my relationships, everybody decides how my life will go because I allow them to dictate my destiny. For the first time in my life, I am completely frozen in place, nobody can turn me or flip me how they like. I move how I like to, at least that’s what I’m trying to do. I’ve never made my life my own, and as terrifying as that may be, it’s something we all have to do. However, don’t think I will come out of this completely freed, because my past holds me down like a leash around my neck. I may be out of my glass cage, but those blue eyes keep me frozen in thin air, never quite capable of flying on my own.
Save Yourself
Slinging yourself into the empty abyss of questionable choices and bottomless pits of regret will get you nowhere but the places you don’t want to be. I should know, I found the bottom of that pit, I define it, and the reality of loneliness sets in as soon as you appear in the presence of your worst self. Drawn toward the darkness, the self sabotage that forces you into unhappiness through the unwillingness to trust in the universe, that is what creates this realm of pitch black. Crawling on hand and knee toward any sign of light will not lead you in the right direction, running head on into the darkness, allowing it to envelope the wholeness that is your essence and passing through it is your only hope. I’m on one knee, trying desperately to bring myself upright, yet the beings of this version of Hell hold me in place. I never expected my love to have his hand on my shoulders again, but by allowing imagination to take physical form may not always be the best idea, surely you can learn from my mistakes. Save yourself. I’ve dug my hole too deep to cross the threshold toward positive promises, at least for now.
Upstream
I hold secrets within my soul, my broken, battered, riddled soul. My chest is in a constant state of constriction, lost deep in the Amazon, awaiting rescue from my own self-harm. Swimming upstream is a tiring exercise, beating against my body with the rapidity of a torrential downpour in late summer. All I can search for in this darkness is the light of all lights to bring forth an honorable presence within my heart, one that can save me from myself. When I close my eyes I can picture it, that close salvation of the many, and all I can see out of the black is you. You are the hope I hold, the opportunity of excellence in my life, and yet you are nothing I can grasp. You flutter away like a scrap of paper from the novel of my life, torn out by your own hand, ever wandering in the opposite direction. I force my eyes closed just to envision you standing beside me one moment more, keeping in mind that the ecstasy from this love will dissipate once I return to the surface of the River Styx down which I float, down which we are all forced in the end.
Lulling Behind
Tightly curled up in a chair, I feel as close to myself as I could possibly feel, but my heart lies in the distance. I search for the beating, the pounding that has vacated my chest in the midst of a blink. I wander. I wish. I close my eyes and feel the warmth of myself only feet away from my cavity, but who would’ve known that my heart had been captured, locked in a cage by the one whose downfall was mine own. He stands across the room. He stares at the space in between, reminiscing about the holistic beauty he once cherished. Leaving, he’s whisked away with the peace of me lulling at his coattails.
Lulling Behind 