because i said i would

For all those born beneath an angry star
lest we forget how fragile we are

on and on the rain will fall
like tears from a star
on and on the rain will say
how fragile we are
-sting

if only a few words tremble out of this mouth
and make it to the page
then I have done what I set out to do.

to speak.
to begin again.

with old music playing, so much that it felt like nothing I have ever done has mattered,
I rose to the occasion of stretching and falling and remembering
my blood and breath.
I am trying to dance with this deep borne melancholy that is sometimes the only familiar place I recognize.
my skin is not the same. nor my heart.
I want closeness and laughter and that way of knowing in a darkened room what a face feels like and that there is something there.
I feel far away from all of my friends. It is a distance that is impossible.
I have lost so many.
I don't want to reach out but I want to be caught.
I want to be there for all of it, but I don't know for who.

I don't want to suffocate myself with loneliness.
I don't want to suffocate my love. He is good. He is love. He is all of everything, but he can't hold all of everything for me. He shouldn't have to.
I am immense and tangled and a storm that sometimes needs to be set off to sea.

I am grateful.

and, this thickness of gray gets the better of me sometimes.

torpor

it's the eve of the eve and i have not been a good tender of the muse.
I have left her waiting and willowing and wallowing in
loneliness
and so I become lonely, too.

I am seeking balance
and something from the inside that is a deep exhale for my soul.
I run.
I do.
I busy myself and fill the plate with something after another something.
and I feel lonely
and sometimes angry
and irritable
and I don't know how in the world I will ever feel the fullness of belonging again.

i don't.

and I don't because
I don't nurture it.
I stay hidden.
I stay unavailable.
I stay in pain.
and no one knows.

I am loveable from a distance.

that's how I begin.
when I write, I remember that,
so I don't write anymore.
or sing.
or dance.

and something is dying inside of me.

there is no mystery to this latest version of depression.

i have strangled the muse and shut out all the laughing.


the question is:
how do I come back to life?