this week i felt so heavily taxed it’s like i’m being robbed of something.
i don’t want to be here. i don’t want to be around anyone but a few, i don’t want to be perceived, i don’t want to be thought of. i don’t want the smiles from certain people because i don’t deserve them, i have fooled them with only a few actions they’ve seen of me and the surface that looks clean and flawless. that’s the thing— if only they knew me deeply would they maybe back the hell away, not smile as much, refuse to look me in the eye with such cordiality.
i am not even being cruel to myself. i am honesty right now. this heaviness weighs on my back like a load i can’t pretend isn’t there anymore. i look in the mirror and the reflection is so tired, so fed up. if only i could open the minds of people around me just to erase the memory of me from them and disappear somewhere. if only everyone forgot me for a second, and i had no trace of prior existence— a fresh start where i can begin newly again, where perhaps even i’d be known to myself as someone with less baggage, less of all the bad things that have happened to me and continue to happen under the surface which makes it all the more insidious and sickening. i am tired of myself. of the people who made me who i am today. i hope to get lighter. so much so that i fly away as if filled with helium, never to come back down on this wretched planet with its wretched people who see the worst in me and the deceived who see the best in me.
“How long will it feel like burning, said the child trying to be kind.”
— Anne Carson, from Decreation; Lines.
On some days, I feel this deep longing
For someone.
To be held, to feel my heartbeat
To feel the warmth of my body
Against someone.
On some nights, I sleep listening
To slow love songs.
Pretend that its raining outside
And wrap myself around
The warmth of a comforter and
Fall asleep
Pretending that I'm being loved by someone.
I don't know what is this urge of a human
To be loved so deeply,
That everything else seems insignificant.
last day of august.
Will I be too needy and greedy
to be asking for a 50mint long hug?
Cause, I want to be swallowed by the
feeling of warmth in my body
I can feel my heart turning to a stone
Everytime I run towards love, i could
feel my stone cold heart knocking
against my rib cage
it breaks my bones
it hurts a lot
and sit still for a while
until it goes away.
Until I meet someone new
who again makes me want to feel
embrace the warmth.
But the cycle continues.
and I'm not gonna share any of it with anyone
i want romance. i want intimacy. i want the 2 am love making. i want consistency, loyalty. i want the random looks of admiration. i want to know you're just for me. i want date nights. i want love so pure and true. i want it because i can return it.
"Bare your soul to me"
-Janet Suhh
Quotes by Sylvia Plath, The Journals of Sylvia Plath
— Hanif Abdurraqib, from “They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us.”