Five minutes to midnight.
not really okay but not falling apart either.
Five minutes to midnight
and I’m thirsty
not for water
for sugar
but I won’t give in
because that’s what discipline looks like now
sitting in the heat
wishing for something sweet
and choosing nothing
the fan is useless
the night is heavy
and I’ve got too many names in my head
too many people
too many little red hearts
I scroll past poems and pain
and I want to care about all of it
I do
but I’m just so tired
not sleepy tired
just done
done in the way where talking to yourself feels like work
where even kindness
even showing up
costs more than it should
I see people hurting
people posting and waiting
and I know I should say something back
but I’ve said too much already
and now I’ve got nothing left
not because I don’t care
but because I can’t split myself into a thousand pieces
I think about them all
and it just makes me feel worse
I’m sorry if I missed your post
I’m sorry if I didn’t reply
I’m sorry if I looked away
it wasn’t you
it’s just
me
trying to survive
and be kind
and not vanish completely
Background:
I wrote this because at the moment I am just really tired. The kind of tired where everything feels like too much, even the good stuff. I’d been seeing a lot of people online talking about how unsupported they feel, especially writers, and I understood it. I also feel guilty, because I want to show up for people. I want to read everything they write. I want to be someone they can count on. But the truth is I follow too many people, and I’m overwhelmed.
I’m not ignoring anyone on purpose. I’m not detached. I’m just drained. I wrote this to let that truth breathe for a minute.
It’s not pretty. It’s not edited. But maybe someone else out there feels the same way, and maybe this tells them they’re not alone.
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About the Creator
Foot Bindings
I asked my grandmother how she knew she'd fallen in love. I am not sure I ever did love him, she said. This was before I met my husband. I was naive, a naked spring, a raw nerve of a thing. That cannot ever be me, I knew. Sadness swept in gently like a Moscow thaw. It is no simple thing, looking into a woman's vast soul and seeing its foot bindings. Now, in Italy divorced with my skin singed off, when I say I don't love him mean: I have succeeded at feeling nothing most days and it mostly works. Do you want the comfort of Nothing? Do you want Nothing, too? Be warned: you'll never be free, even when you are nothing. Here is what doesn't work: Accepting the stages of grief. Talking about it. Sitting with the feeling. Missing him—no, the person you were when you believed in death do us part. Writing poetry. That, too. When I say I don't love him I mean: I feel capsized in an endless, starved tide. What sometimes works: selective memory. You must forget ripe tomatoes and his beard and feeling perfectly sheltered in a big blue world. Forget coffee in bed, laughter watching TV, blowing out the candles on the birthday cake and the quiet all-encompassing knowledge that you are chosen. Remember only how love turned to a banal everyday survival act, a trapeze act unsure whether he will catch you, how the warmth stagnated and became sour, remember the foot bindings and remember the resentment boiling in your veins as you stick it out for the kids. Six-hour Netflix binges help, too. A man's fingers tracing your spine. Frozen pizza at 2 a.m. Random trips to the museum just to stand near things that last a while. The realization that crying won’t change anything. Seeing that life is just a dream, and refusing to participate in your own suffering. Bite your fist. Walk on eggshells around joy. When I say I don't love him, I mean he didn’t break my heart, he just stopped touching it and it forgot how to beat right.
By Ella Bogdanova4 days ago in Poets
The Lesions of Devotion
Every day I set myself down on the freshly cut lawn and strip myself bare. I take my guitar and finger the frets and pick at the strings, listening for dissonance. My life is dissonance. I twist the tuning pegs until each string sounds bright. Then I kneel, calves pointing behind me, kneecaps facing forward. All exposed to the breeze. I close my eyes and play the melody.
By Paul Stewart5 days ago in Fiction
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