self escaping @selfescaping - Tumblr Blog

i want to say there’s no way to tell. we can do a good job of controlling the voice. but i looked into a man’s eyes after he said someone had died, saw the off center, milky eyes, and i knew. greedily i looked a little longer so i would remember. it is so easy to hear a lie that you forget the sound of the truth.

no i remember who you are. i know. i’ve always known that shitty face in the mirror i’ve always known. this isn’t pain it’s knowing it doesn’t matter. everything you did was a waste.

whispers are waiting for you to go to sleep, always mourning the end that’s coming,

but they’re all alone. a sea of sand and stone and they are all alone. they walk to you and you remember, very quietly, that you swore an oath.

used to curl it around used to care what it found out yell in the sunburnt sand made you laugh with plans sipped shaking mirage lying on the side in the car all the sweat i have known falling asleep alone violent tones bones echo wake to white

#poetry

simmer silver in a million dreams spread beneath the moon, and a storm stir a three line smile burn in time it was always a race to be what you want i never asked i never asked what was i? two careers too far from a do over in the rain but i don’t regret a thing

#poetry

told you i told you a tale and it should wilting yellow leaves grazing with the sun and i thought it was done, if it’s not there, no more echoes in the night asking why, but once then in pairs and they rush in, tearing at fabric dirt in the nails, i like the facade drown in your work the screams seem so far

#poetry

could have but it isn’t. they were thoughts you don’t act on, ideas only glimpsed, i won’t say could have

if it isn’t anything, it’s okay to call it nothing. there are some things i wish i would have done, but then you keep on not doing

them and you get used to it, you live in it, it’s who you are. the lies trickle in from somewhere and soon it’s not a hint, it’s in the air you

what hubris, if it is all around you, how could you think you wouldn’t become like this too?

could tell, i can tell there is a space where it would have fit. it would have made sense, each word, all that was done between then and now,

there was always something off, kept trying to fix it. but it didn’t matter how it looked, i forgot. it was

about how you made the other feel. and i didn’t feel anything, so how could

fill it up with static and put it in the water, lay it gently on the side, watch the wind grasp it gently, watch it

#prose

it’s not wrong that bad things happen, it’s wrong when we don’t care anymore. maybe it’s natural to just care for those we’re close to. we prioritize. but if people aren’t freezing on the street, they’re losing everything in fire. the strong do what they want and the weak suffer what they must, but it doesn’t make it right. the bargain we make with the conscience is to do what we can. maybe that is one way we can live with ourselves.

it was safe. sticks and lines on a paper you could put away. it was a circus lightshow you could flip on. sad chords rang a bright sound, saw a whole life pass by. if you had something else going on, you could look away. there were no promises, you couldn't know anything for sure, but you didn't have to, so it was safe. branches cracked, water surged by, but it wasn't handholding, soulbearing, it was a story, and i don't blame you. it was safe.

bitter soul, bite with canines in burnt fields, screech of a creature searing overhead, i know why you'd rather be somewhere else, but i know what you forgot: it was too much, too fast, twelve strings in a dark room and the rhythm always changed. would tell you so, but i'm too close to the question

that dull itch below the skin, felt it again: when you look into a stranger's eyes and blink hello. the world you see is a vast, tiring universe. the dim lights are safer. glass is empty, but the ice makes it half full. i am at work, looking at deadlines with dryness; working the room, watching a sea of souls turn as i wonder how i got here.

Every morning is a reminder that I haven't napped enough.

have seen a few very beautiful moments in my life. Ann in her wedding dress, lawyers standing with me ready to go to jail for my client, a nurse with a law degree who put aside bar study to work on covid floors, complete strangers who cried with me as we tried to rescue a journalist from kabul.

wish i could tell you i stayed with my clients in jail when they were isolated from their families. that i didn't hide when i could and took Ann inland as soon as i could. that the journalist's family wasn't left behind.

had the naive belief growing up that, when things were truly, fundamentally broken, these hidden helpers would surge from the depths of our weaknesses and hold things together for others to make better. but i realized too late that a lot of people have died and we didn't learn to compromise after all. a part of me is still irrationally bitter that they didn't save us. that we should have been better.

Men. There was probably a group at a tavern in Pompeii, just like us, ruining deep reflections with scenes of debauchery as fires raged nearby. I don't care for the show of power, but it is the betrayal of exhaustion that entices me to these gatherings of the tired, this sizable loss of meaning in those who have compromised to survive.

"I thought you were going to be a pretty good defense lawyer," Armand said. He caught me off guard, so I chuckled, "I underestimated how broke I was."

"You said it." He shook his balding head over the salad with the salmon, "Some months are lean. A lot of people don't save when they have to. They get in trouble and they call me."

I shrugged, "Do they pay you?"

"Until I deal with it. Can you help me when they don't? I'll pay you." I was always getting offered more money for more work. It was a trap, even if they didn't know it. "I value my time more," I said at last.

"Good."

know how you look, this blinding glass takes days at a time and i told you i'm fine. evening was something sweet, with ice, until you get to reach for the bitters and then it's slow, a neat scotch, a sip an hour. lights turning off across the island, and i'm closing the place out, going with wayne to another dive that's still open, and you know how it goes: i make it home alone, breathing slow in the dark. that was how it was, without you. now it is different. don't need drinks anymore, to feel the darkness all around, to look at this stranger i am.

#prose

in each act of life there was a message hidden somewhere. in childhood, it was a series of blink-182 lyrics that my future self could use to verify as a time traveler. in high school there was a terse email sent, that only i remember, a small tragedy in the collapse of a massive humanitarian effort.

and in one of my songs from six years ago, i am rambling about how i am not who i wanted to be, and i can hear my conscience now:

i am still not who i wanted to be. with the compromises i have made with myself to get here, i can live with it. until my hand is forced by something that is unjust. i tell myself i'll know it when i see it.

it was different when we were a team. it was in a movie, an artificial recreation of two people who used to be in love. but it wasn't artificial, because a million people saw that gaze and saw a broken family they knew. i know i did.

--

once every blue moon i am able to invoke the oath to act towards the lonely, rare direction of what is just. justice, truth, honor: these sounds are seldom heard, but they are the last refuge of duty.

so i can utter these words on the solemn occasion they can make the difference in a life. and i am silently grateful to see even the mere survival of these words still means something, to someone.

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