I'm a girl

a girl who exaggerates her problems

just like everyone else

a girl who tries to fit in

just like everyone else

a girl who can't fit in

just like everyone else

I'm a girl

who is so much like everyone else

who tries to be so much like everyone else

that I don't know who myself is

only that I'm a carbon copy

of the next teenage girl you see walking down the street

except that I'm a carbon copy

that didn't turn out quite right

so in the end

I'm a girl

just a girl

a girl who tries but fails and keep trying because there's no other option

because not fitting in isn't an option

not anymore

because I changed from that fifth grader

who strived in every way to not be like everyone else

but I didn't change like everyone else

just enough to be on the outside looking in

a girl who can't hack it

not enough to fit in

a try-hard who can't try hard enough

so here I am

trying and failing and trying some more

because I have no more options left.

You meet someone. You two get close. It’s all great for a while. Then someone stops trying. Talk less. Awkward conversations. The drifting. No communication whatsoever. Memories start to fade. Then that person you know becomes that person you knew. That’s how it usually goes, right? Sad, isn’t it?

Foggy gloom

Anxiety Pace

Window Invitings

No, just covered with rain

Time ticks and with each one

I go insane

Loneliness is my friend

But even he evades

I try to follow

But my tears.. are my only trace

They said my life ended

when I was forced onto the streets.

They said my life deflated like a balloon

when the pressure was too high.

They said it was a shame

that a girl with so much potential

was now throwing life away like trash,

(favouring drugs over a “steady life”).

But my life was trash

before I wound up on the streets.

(I was crying myself to sleep

and letting red streaks

stain my sheets.)

I was homeless even before I had no house:

I’ve always been alone

(a solo soul stuck in a hell).

I’ve always been a drifter

(a ghost abandoned to look upon a “good life”).

I’ve always felt this coldness clinging close to my skin

(no one has ever been there to hug it away).

I was dead before I touched this icy ground:

I’ve always held an endless galaxy of falling stars.

I’ve always felt this unknown pain that runs throughout my veins.

I’ve always had these internal wounds that bleed

(never able to be bandaged).

They said my life ended

when I was forced onto the streets.

But my life has always been over:

I’ve always felt numb,

I’ve always felt lost,

I’ve always felt dead.

The difference is,

is that now

you finally see

just how broken I really I am.

(Why did it have to get to this point?)

Look at them looking at me

Thinking I’m sweet

I’m an angel

I’m perfect

But they don’t see the scars

The tears

The broken heart

The demon inside

I wish they could

So someone could hold me

Kiss me

Scare the demons away

But they think

I

Am

Innocent

...

It’s funny, really.

How we stare from our balconies at the ants scurrying below. How we pass them on the streets—the wanting eyes, the starving mouths, the empty hands. Hair stiff as wire, clothing an amalgam of layered coats and scarves, mismatched socks, worn-out sandals.

We pass them, and we think.

That could never be me.

Look at here. Look at now. In this moment, I’m all set. We get so acclimated to small comforts that our minds can’t even meet them halfway down. We can’t see ourselves in their shoes. Our imaginations just aren’t that big.

I used to think like that. Before the divorce and the alimony, before the recession, before the unemployment and fire and the insurance company refusing to compensate because I didn’t insure every blade of grass in my yard or knick-knack in my study.

I downsized to a trailer. But welfare cut my benefits again five months ago, and just like that I was another ghost at the panhandle. It all happened so slow. It all happened so fast.

And time don’t wait. They say it moves quicker as you get older. All I know is, as a starry-eyed grad student, I never pictured it would end up like this. I never pictured myself as a middle-aged loner sleeping with the rats under blankets of corrugated tin. This isn’t the life I went three-hundred-grand in the hole to build.

But where did I go wrong?

One minute, everything was falling into place. The next it was falling to pieces, and as hard as I tried to preserve it, the decay was just too persistent. It spread too fast, and overtook my future.

Everything’s decayed now.

Even my memories are starting to rust.

There’s a lady out here I used to pass by on my way to work, every day. I used to avert my gaze, never locking with her hungry, pothole eyes. Her chessboard teeth. Her gnarled, swollen hands and yellowed, untrimmed nails. They would reach. And I would walk. And she would call. And I would walk. And she would say “God bless you” anyway. And smile.

And I would walk.

Silent. Distracted. Too consumed by dizzying fantasies of the trophy wife who left me. Our future children that we never had. A bigger house, twice the size of the meager three-bedroom apartment we shared. I always wanted bigger, I guess. Now I have nothing. Now I’d settle for what we wanted to leave behind in a heartbeat.

I met that lady again just the other day. Apparently she’d found a shelter uptown a few months back and they’d helped her get her life in order. She got on as a dishwasher at this little diner. She looked a lot cleaner. Not fancy, by far. But she looked...ever-so-slightly like I used to. It was a sobering reversal, watching her hands.

They reached. And I couldn’t walk anymore. And she called, and from my teary eyes I could make out that her hands were no longer empty. They didn’t ask; they offered.

At the end of the day, I never had the heart to take her money.

But I learned her name.

It was Lila. Lila McPherson.

She had a name.

They all did.

Oh, and one more little bit of information I left out. The last doctor visit I could afford didn’t go so good. Not that it mattered. At this point I’d give anything just to get out.

Another year at most I’ve got to rot in this place.

I could look for the shelter that rehabilitated Lila. But why? I’d be getting polished up just to die. Anything from hereon out is an exercise in futility.

So now all I can do is find my reflection in passing. Wait for a bus window or puddle or mirror. Find myself, and try to recognize. Find myself, and try to remember. Still, it seems every newest version of myself I find, he’s so far removed from the man I knew. And there’s no strength left to change him.

All I can do is remind him, reassure him.

He has a name too.

#fiction, #prose, #challenge, #homeless, #depression

What if

You let me in

Let me rush right through the door

Into your world of shadows

Would my divine light shine too bright

Would it hurt your twilight eyes

What if

Your heart softens

The honey from my kiss

Pours straight down your throat

Coating your bitterness in a sweet liquid

Would it be too much

Would you choke

What if

You gripped my heart and shook my

Monotone world to the core

Giving me the adventure I crave

And the peace you are desperate for

Your eyes reflecting the stars in mine

What if

You realized

That I asked for this

That I have been standing

Devotedly outside your door for a lifetime

Knuckles bleeding crimson from the bleeding

What if

You gave in

You stopped punishing yourself

Your warrior heart lit aflame

You knocked the door to the ground

And took me in your arms

What if

You accepted this love