“(Isn’t Memory Often About Loneliness?)”

"No War"

I looked to the east and there was a war.

I looked to the west and there was a war.

I looked north and I looked south and there was a war.

I looked within and there was a war.

I felt no peace, no safety, no comfort anywhere.

With bone deep, aching tiredness, I looked at the arduous journey before me with quiet, blank eyes.

Whatever my destiny maybe, I started with the war within.

I bled and cried out emotions, pains and fears.

Years of souls haunting me from beyond their graves.

I fought and I fought and I fought.

They whispered sweet nothings in my ears. Their sirens call piercing as they wail and they wail and they wail.

I still fought and I fought and I fought.

And before I knew, their voices grew weak.

They washed over me like sea foam, dull and bleak.

Then I built and I built and I built.

After what felt like centuries, I lifted my head.

I looked to the east and I looked to the west.

I looked to the north and I looked to the south.

There was no war, only peace.

~Me

I don't feel so good today.

I feel a strange, ancient ache in my soul. An aged feel to my rigid bones that once held the weight of the earth and the sky. Now they wish to rest, to turn to dust. They have endured enough weathering. I feel nostalgic for a life I have never lived, for a life I wish I lived. I suppose I do understand this humane desire. The soul was never meant to stay on the earth. It was meant to rise. And here, now, it is bound to, shackled to this body and inadvertently, to this world,held taut by the unyielding chains of gravity. I yearn for the day I return home. Up there.

I don't feel so good today and that's fine.

~Me

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (Painting), 1843

by Alexandre Louis Leloir.

Anastasia Trusova on Instagram

subtitles from Science Gossip, 1900

"If you could see yourself through my eyes ,mom, you'd think that you embedded the diamond stars in the ink stained universe with your bare, calloused hands."

My tranquil, little moon,

my sweet midnight,

Your saccharine nectar drips from the star dew sky,

And drapes me in a blanket of warmth and bittersweet acceptance.

Your words are silent like a tender droplet of water blooming on a cloth but the formidable, commanding waves in your head bow to no man.

~Me

“So, if you are too tired to speak, sit next to me for I, too, am fluent in silence.”

— R. Arnold