The Thoughts of the Sleepless

All posts are original

[cloudwhisperings]

Sometimes I escape my mind for a while by being domestic

Hours slipping away with the folding of towels into neat little corners

Hands brushing away lint and stray strings

Serving up lunch with a splash of Sriracha

Washing the dishes with water, hot, until my hands are as red as the bottle

[cloudwhisperings]

I once thought that if I moved fast enough over dark thoughts they would not pull me down to their depths,

that the wind in my hair would feel so good that I would forget the chill on my frostbitten cheeks,

that somehow, the pursuit of what we collectively call success would shelter me from the hurt that came from within and around me.

But slowly I am learning that although we desperately seek validation and companionship, many of life’s truths and adjustments are a decision of the self.

That growing older and becoming an adult is not about taxes and homes and babies and marriage,

but about shedding a skin, peeling back a layer that reveals a sense of comfort with what is,

losing what does not matter,

losing what does not lend pleasure,

losing what does not bring joy,

allowing the rise of a one-woman revolution of enthusiastic “Yes!”

Resting without the compulsive need to accede to exceed to succeed,

but to merely be

enough.

[cloudwhisperings]

The way you knit yourself into my heart,

Not even the ocean can wear down the gravitational force that brings us back together time and time again.

Tides coming in like we’re coming home,

Each time returning to a slightly different shore, weathered by the ways we’ve grown.

And yet, the sand feels soft between my toes,

And the sea glass ever more beautiful.

Don’t you see?

The waves may crash and sting salt in our wounds, but I will gladly lie beneath the beating sun with you -

The rays turning the water into minerals,

Tiny specks to match your freckles,

As our skin, and our years, turn golden.

[cloudwhisperings]

I love the smell of smoke in the air, smoke in your hair from the fire we gathered around.

I see myself with my head on your shoulder, wanting a little bit more warmth than the fire can give me.

It’s cold in New York but the energy of your memory shines with a heat that I can’t dial down no matter how much I try to suffocate it.

[cloudwhisperings]

body swollen 

mind hollow

eyes tired

little whispers

eat eat

little fingers creep.

brain abuzz

neurons numb

look to run

shadows hiding

sleep sleep

too far gone

almost dawn.

[cloudwhisperings]

Trying to escape the smoke curling around his lips and entering the world

Trying to escape the smoke entering the world

Trying to escape the world

Trying to escape

Trying

[cloudwhisperings]

It’s been a year since I’ve kissed you.

Breath hot on mine in the back of a taxi,

It’s been a year, and I miss you.

But now it’s not one, but two, then three,

Years, and partners and degrees of separation,

Now it’s not just us – you and me.

It’s a memory, another experience alive in my mind

Killed by reality, untapped potential

Burrowed in unspoken whispers in kind.

I feel it in your blue-eyed gaze

The recognition still there, the feeling simmering

But decisions are made, and now, separate ways.

[cloudwhisperings]

There are some mechanisms that rely on speed to keep afloat. They graze along the surface with just enough momentum, for were they to stop, they would start to sink below the ebbing waves, pulled deeper and deeper. My emotions tend to be the gravity pulling me under, my actions the momentum. I do, I create, I gasp for breath because the alternative is feeling cold water crush my lungs as my body goes numb. My life is a constant state of speeding along the surface, too focused to slow down. Every so often, it slows, and brusk punctuations come in uncertain patterns, prickle sensations and sobbing memories, yearning to be alone, but to not feel alone.

I think back to a time when I had no responsibility, when all I was required to do was stay alive and be curious and learn. When did we lose this part of ourselves? When did I become an adult, responsible for all parts of my existence? When did I lose myself – the part of me that was free and unadulterated? Even that word – unadulterated – not being an adult. To be adult, to lose a part of you, to change. Sometimes I see that I have changed so much I barely recognize that my eyes are green or my face smooth or that my hair now falls to my collarbones. The qualities I most identified with exist no longer. Who am I without them? Who have I become? Where is my music, my poetry, my free spirit, my joy? When did I lose them? How did I miss it as they became detached and trailed behind the freight train of “success”? 

I get scared to stop and look at the life I am leading. To see who I really am. To feel how I have no idea where I exist in time or space or why here and now and why this work and all of it is just floating debris that is being pushed by gentle movements in the water, leading to… no where. Where is this all even going? If life is about the people we are with, the relationships we cultivate, why can I not even bare the bones of my existence? I fear I have become so separate from the sediment at the bottom of my ocean that when I start to be pulled toward it I see it as an abyss – I no longer remember what is down there. How can I dive deep, vulnerable, and skim those layers when not even I recognize the waters we are in? And if life is about the experiences – why do we chase success? What joy and failure makes this path worthwhile?

[cloudwhisperings]

I wish I could describe the peace and serenity of the winter woods, but words would only detract from its beauty.

[cloudwhisperings]

I want to tell you

I want to tell you: I was depressed.

I want to tell you: I went out drinking and the next day I didn’t have a hangover per se, but I felt like my soul had been ripped out of me.

I want to tell you: My mental health has been rough and I can’t escape the brain that’s been given to me and it’s feeding me in circles of hate hate hate until I’m empty.

I want to tell you: Yes, I’m busy. But the busy is welcomed, it’s wanted, because nothing can keep my mind off of myself better then the distraction of neverending work and goals and progress.

I want to tell you: I don’t know how to talk to you. When you ask me what’s wrong I can’t explain that you’re the only one I don’t want to talk to.

I want to tell you: I don’t want you to take it the wrong way, so I say nothing.

I want to tell you: I hate that you love my curves. I wish they would melt off my frame, they are not welcome in my brain, I wish I just had the wherewithal and perseverance like I used to.

I want to tell you: I want to recover, but I don’t, so I can’t tell you.

I want to tell you: I love you, but I can’t fully love you until I tell you my whole truth but I can’t because it’s much too scary a reality for me to face.

I want to tell you: It’s not about you, it’s about me. It’s a selfish self-perpetuation of not wanting to give up on my reckless habits because they’re the only thing that has been steady since I was 16 years old.

I want to tell you: Stop therapizing me. When I tell you I want space I mean it. 

I want to tell you: One day is not enough space.

I want to tell you: I’m not ready for this level of attachment.

I want to tell you: I want to be alone and I want to live alone, but right now I’m struggling, and I need to be with you.

I want to tell you: I need help, but I’m not exactly sure how to commit to it.

I want to tell you: I’m not sure if this is love.

[cloudwhisperings]

4/26

I am negative energy,

Expending more than I consume

I float above the surface of the earth gaining power with each step.

I am a tsunami,

Say your sorrows to those who fall in my wake.

I am Jezebel,

Watch me devour my hellish dominion.

I take no prisoners,

They are only fleeting bodies that crunch beneath my tender soles.

The wind whimpers when I cut through the concrete antebellum,

And when I rest, I dream not of the stars, but of the blackness between them.

[cloudwhisperings]

When I shiver at night and you hold me close I try to explain that I'm not cold it's just the ghosts of my past rattling my ribcage, trying to get out and warn you to stay away.

He is half of my being. He is the dark clouds that cover my judgment and tell me to not eat. He is the one I come home to at night when no one else is around. He is the one that tells me I'm unloved and wills me to cry to let him out of my burrowing sadness rooted deep in my gut and He is the one that never seems to leave no matter how hard I try to push him away, even though my tactics seem to work on every other person in my life.

Darling, you must understand that when I try to warn you of the shadows in my life it is not some guise to push you away, it is me trying to save you before you drown in the dark seas I have been consumed by. 

[cloudwhisperings]

2/1

This injury has made me hungry.

Aching to run, or walk, or crawl to the start line

to sprint to a destination other than the depression in my mind.

Hungry.

Left with emptiness that I have tried to fill so many times, 

I am greedy.

For validation and love and the feeling of my emotions slipping out of me with each step

I long for the feeling of weightlessness, painlessness, the feeling of success,

Hungry.

When at night I stuff the hole that is left, 

I want to feel empty, but full.

The dichotomy is not lost on me but how can they both coexist?

I am fraught with the sides of me, 

but who am I without the other, 

the dark that consumes me,

What would I be if I let go?

[cloudwhisperings]

12/22

I think about you a lot.

The way you drift into my mind like the ocean tide as easy as gravity pulling you close to the earth, organic.

Sometimes it catches me by surprise that you so easily come into my mind without me noticing, creeping back in, familiar as a neighborhood cat on the doorstep.

I want to curl up in the moments I have preserved in my memories but I know that things are not the same, that we have changed and grown and shifted.

I long for the impossible day when our young love, frozen in time, comes back around in minutes and seconds, finally concurrent in the same location, wrapping itself around whispers and touches.

All I want is to be home.

[cloudwhisperings]

Active

When the wind makes your hair stand on end out of pleasure, out of a yearning for sensation it does not stop and wait, it simply blows.

Cries into dark tunnels of cement will always bounce back because the laws of nature bind it to be active, reflecting, responsive. The wells of honesty come smooth and easy, they feel no dam. Words spill out of your mind like heavy raindrops when a cloud is too full and you just can’t keep them in any longer, even though they may be splattering and sputtering as they hit.

Every morning your name enters my mind, springing up in fits in every action that attempts completion or comes to fruition you are the reason I keep responding.

Passive

An object at rest will stay at rest until an outside force is acted upon it, but my god for some reason the laws of nature do not apply to your love or perhaps I didn't provide enough force. When you are left alone you will sit at the bottom of my stomach pitted against my will for you to leave. I want to ignore you, but you sit far too heavy. 

Just one touch and you heave endlessly against my sides and I wonder if there will ever be a time when I can forget you completely.

[cloudwhisperings]

A Walking Meditation to Try and Forget You

Feel your feet with each step as your heel strikes the pavement inside your boots

Feel the fabric of your socks slip down the insole down to your toes rubbing together

Remember the sand moving with every step feeling the ocean water move beneath you and the wind whip strands of hair around your face as you pick razor clams out with silly laughs 

Feel your leggings against your calves, the seam up your thigh and the band hugging your hips 

Remember the gentle touch running up your back, the legs intertwined and warmth of your chest

Hear the cars drive past and the wind in the trees, rustling dead leaves and bringing them to the ground, crunching underfoot as you walk East-West

As we imagine the sun did that evening we missed the golden setting behind the swaths of clouds stretched across the sky, but barely looking between stolen glances, no, stares, unable to keep our eyes off of each other for more than a minute

Breathe in deep, feel the sweater on your shoulders and your jaw relax as you let go, becoming an outsider. Observe the thoughts as they flit through your mind, and just be. 

[cloudwhisperings]

Ab(used)

Is it still abuse when you give consent?

When you woke me up in the morning in the dark with your body heavy against mine and I told myself

It was normal

When you said the song was so relatable because Haven’t we all settled for less when what we want has gone away?

I waited until the words bubbled up so strong that they spilled out my mouth

Did you settle with me?

You stare straight ahead at the highway racing underneath

We should talk.