"Once for every time you felt alive"
I guess this is what sad feels like. I know this feeling, I know it over and over, day after day and all in new ways. Always anew, always somehow shocking, but somehow familiar, and hated and chained.
I get old, I get older and nothing changes. It keeps, it keeps here and safe. The sad just nestles deeper.
You know I try right? You know I try and hard. And try and hard over and over, like a repetitive stip-stop-clap-clomp. I'm ready for the rumble.
How tough do I have to be to get through this? I don't know how tough. But I am tough. But I wonder if it's tough enough. And I rhyme and prattle, on and on. The little things I say that never get heard. All the times I shake my head to let it out, loosen it up. But it won't come out.
At night I slather my arms and elbows in lotion. I shower and over and over. Shampoo, condition. I try to wash it out. Out of my pores (trapped), out of my skin and hands. Obsessively washing off the germs while still getting sick and being sick, and sick-sick-sick.
So you know I'm trying right? And all you/I need is love. And children in my other heart. My misshapen heart of a uterus that won't make babies. Maybe my only ultrasound, that time we found the heart shape. Maybe it's a grace, a saving them from this suffering of life-life-life. That I can't escape because I'm scared and brave, and a goddamn stubborn fighter.
But you know I try. And at night I sit and always a rabble of thoughts follow and step in to me, marching in, marching in deep. And they turn like a wheel, and spin like a top. The thoughts, thoughts, and the thought of the thought of all I am thinking.
And then to sleep and the 'mares all night. The scary 'mares and waking frightened, sleeping frightened, crying about going to sleep and yet needing it to survive. All of it is one big long cry. But it never ends.
Oh and the morning. The waking early, the breakfast and pushing the button to make the coffee. Every day I push the button, every day I stand up. Sit tall, sit small, sit and walk and move. Buy and run a house, talk (how do I speak a word?), and smile...a real miracle, that smile.
And pain and sick, and you know I try. How hard I try to smile and be kind. To not complain. To feel pretty and good and wanted. When I don't know how. When I don't know why. When I look at you and what you do and so often wonder.
How did this happen? How did I get here? How did I get to you and you to me in all this sad? And can you remember? Remember all those times we were in love, and what we said and did with our hands. And how it changes, over and over (rumble, ready rumble). And then it stops, just for a bit, and then it remembers.
I get lost and then remember. I can't do it but I do it. And I am so sad. So sad and this is sad and devastated. So devastated. I earn more and yet don't have a dime. In my heart is an empty, and I am empty. And I love and I cuddle. And I breathe and march. And my heart breaks over again. You know I try, right?