I too would be a Hashira of Love

I remember a time we were in my bed, laying there, almost falling asleep.

I can’t remember whose breathing was faster, or more shallow.

I’m on a plane now, paying attention to my every breath as we take off.

Recently I was on a medication that made my breath short, and also recently I’m attempting to improve my VO2 Max.

But even the simple act of breathing takes me back to you.

I wonder if I can ever escape this.

Deluge

I opened the faucet and now the deluge of thoughts won’t cease.

I’m reflecting on the people I know/have met from Scandinavia, that I’m currently in close contact with and they live here in America in opulence.

This isn’t true for all of them, like two summers ago the woman that needed to use the bathroom from Denmark, she didn’t have an air of “aristocracy” or in todays terms, she didn’t seem like she was anywhere near the 1%, in America, not like the guys I know.

And it makes me think, if that was a prerequisite of you staying with me.

And now I think of the time in NY when you went to the bar and one of my friends, he has all this money but he still has a recent ex, that was, I assume, aware of his fortune.

I mean money doesn’t make the man, or the relationship I suppose but I go down these rabbit holes and if I don’t express myself, if I don’t talk about these fucking rabbits I obsess over them until the meter that measures my sanity ticks one mark closer to “complete and utter maniac”

Anyway.

The World

The world just gets smaller and smaller.

People, videos, music all from and or around your country, reminding me of you.

It’s not directly from or even about you but still, I’m reminded.

In-between Sober and Buzzed

I’ve been having tiny flashes of you all week, maybe for even longer.

It’s not my prerogative to try and update this blog everyday, I’m not suffering from my illness like I have in past writings.

I was watching a YouTube video of a woman from Sweden and I thought “They say white people have no culture but there seems to be an abundance in. Scandinavia” and then I thought that you didn’t think to share any with me, didn’t think to give me any semblance of understanding.

And I go back to thinking that I shouldn’t feel anything for you, you gave up on us, on me, so quickly, there’s no real point or logic in feeling this way, and yet I do.

I listened to some music, and like how I built that older playlist, there were songs I could attribute to you, but like how the Killers now have a separate identity, adding those new songs to the playlist felt like me reaching to try and include something of you in my life. So I didn’t include those songs, didn’t even favorite them.

Honestly I want to think of you less and less, and I suppose I’m just trying to figure out how to do just that.

Dressed like a Pillow

For some reason I remember us talking on MSN messenger, or talking to someone that said you have a lot of pillows in your bed.

Now, chronically single, my bed is like that, and I wonder if that’s the only thing we share in common.

Of course, you told me you’re “not the same person” but somehow I seem to suffer so greatly from living in nostalgia.

I’ve changed too, in ways, but most notably I suppose I’ve become more ambitious, but if I think on it it feels like I’ve always been ambitious.

I wonder if we could talk now, what would we say. Would you even listen to music with English lyrics? Or would you force yourself to only consume all things Norwegian? Have you adopted a nationalist identity? After telling me nationalism is a disease?

God knows where I’ve gone and come from being a true blue blooded American, but I suppose it doesn’t matter what country you stake your allegiance too if all of us are going to enter these forever wars.

This isn’t a love letter. I just slam my body into the cushions on my mattress and I think of you, once in a while.

Well here comes the fuzzy-wuzzy, lovey-dovey words about holding you and golden light and all that broken record boomerang nonsense I always tell you.

I really wish we worked out.

I really do.

The longer I took to write this, the more bitter I became

Originally, I was going to write this after I had dreamt of you.

I felt that same passion and drive that you feel to accomplish something in your 20’s.

But as the minutes went on, and I realized that I had to live this painfully rational experience without you. When I say that I mean I feel all the things that would make me say “I can’t live without you” and here I am, proving that wrong, still diligently marching forward, one foot in front of the other, preferring pornography and polyamory to monogamy and “traditional” living.

I had all the fire to talk about you deep within my subconscious, but I expressed it as time went on in a series of tweets:

“I keep dreaming about her. I haven’t engaged with her in a bit over a year. I haven’t looked her up. I haven’t reached out, but still she sits in the back of my mind like she belongs there. If this isn’t love what is it?”

“I’m sitting with the feeling that I should reach out to her. I’m letting it simmer in my body and settle all the dust it’s kicked up in my soul. The feeling is less strong now but still it’s as if I must do something, but something small feels suitable now.”

“And now I’m at the point where it’s fine to do nothing at all. But that’s so sad, it’s such a miserable revelation. This is it? That’s all? Nothing can be done? I feel pathetic.”

_________

Don’t get me wrong, life is good, but these brief, phantoms of you can suck the joy out of life with such efficacy that it is hard to find the words to describe its sorrow.

All in all, I suppose there’s something I can do, although now, an hour away from my waking, it feels pointless, I’ll do it, just to say I did, just so you know.

Clues

I scan the music I like and listen too, waiting to catalog a song that reminds me of you.

The Killers do interviews with Apple Music, so I can’t attribute their new music to your moods, whims, if I ever could. But that’s a good thing, one more thing to find independence from the murk of you that still stirs in my mind.

The bathroom isn’t yours.

Crosswalks aren’t yours.

The benches at the beach aren’t yours anymore either.

Slowly, this city has filled in my nostalgia with new memories, new people, and in some reluctant but necessary way, I’ve moved forward, I’ve moved on, which makes it all the more surreal when I hear these voices talk about you, and my chest or stomach feels like it has butterflies again.

I know I loved you, my body won’t let me forget that. My body has been keeping score.

But I wish it would make room to love someone else.

Ran Away, Gunned Down

I keep hearing horrible things about you.

It’s obvious this new medication isn’t right for me.

Too bad I already paid $1500 to use it.

Ugh.

They keep saying you would’ve gave me head, and ran off, so I could be arrested or killed by that police officer way back then.

I can’t confirm anything with you.

I can only sit here and be assaulted by these thoughts and memories.

This hate and love.

Passion.

Angst.

I wish I could just talk to you.

That’s all I want, more than anything.

To just be able to talk.

9:01

P.S.

Why do they say such dark and vile things about you?

That you “never want to make love again?”

Why do they talk about you being raped so carelessly?

Telling me about your use of illicit, illegal drugs?

Like I can fly around and save you from damnation.

Teleport wherever and whenever you are in peril?

Why couldn’t I just laugh about this when it started.

Why did you stick to me like glue.

And why don’t you care.

God.

New Medication

I’m on new pills but I still hear about you.

I think I’ll go back to my old ones.

The voices say Howard is so possessive of you it would make me look like a homosexual.

As long as you’re happy, I suppose.

I still get the warm and fuzzies when you enter my mind.

Thoughts of you, tapping into my psychic radio waves, laughing at the same things I find incredibly stupid.

Waking up next to you and everything is golden.

Your beating heart on mine as you lay on my chest.

But if you want that kind of love the heart wants what it wants right?

I’m just trying to get mine to stop.

Regression

My new medication is giving me nightmares of you.

Recalling stories of infidelity in our teenage years, although I have written in the past that I would have expected it, and now, as damning as it may be, I accept it, if it ever really happened at all.

I can easily look you up and start the harassment campaign all over again. I won’t, I have to do better for myself as well, but it’s things like this your could debunk, and make me think love is worth finding again.

You don’t care, I wonder if you ever did, because you certainly don’t give a damn now.

I keep enjoying life without you

I see people acting out online and think “you’d be like that.”

I see things that remind me of you and I store the link in a folder, a file, but the hold of it isn’t as strong as it was in the early days of my madness.

I keep enjoying life without you.

As much as I love you, the idea of you, the idea of me loving you, the idea of me that loves you, I’m fine.

I’m trying dating apps again, and while I think I’m not the “type” women I’m interested in are looking for but I’m playing with the idea of polyamory. Not that I desire multiple partners but maybe I could be someones extra partner on the side…

My therapist said I deserve better but after the pandemic, and after you, I don’t really want to try again.

You know that.

And here I am, trying again.

______

Thoughts of you don’t linger, don’t have the same weight that they did before.

This is a good thing.

This is less painful.

This is less time agonizing over what cannot be.

This is more time thinking about something that actually matters.

Things that have a greater effect on me.

Things I need to get done.

Things I’m responsible for.

Ultimately, this blog on the side of my blog is just grief incarnate.

I found the playlist I made back when I was sharing files with you.

I’m going to recreate it on Spotify, and that will be the end of that.

Rumi(nations)

As I sit here eating with my brother, and maybe it’s the past episodes but I’m thinking of you.

How if I introduced you to this entree I’m eating, you’d complain it’s too spicy, and I tease you.

Later, you tell me you can handle the spice, and try some absurd hot sauce without making a face, and tell me to have some, before spitting it out.

We laugh.

And I wonder if that even sounds like you. Has that ever been like you? Have I known you? Will I ever get the chance to know you again?

The answer, for all I know, is no.

Maybe now.

Maybe forever.

Hope?

The voices, sound like they want me to hold out hope of us getting back together.

I “made you see clearly” or something to that effect.

I don’t know why you’re the subject of this madness, but I am taking my medication as often as I remember to.

I even have a little reminder in my phone that tells me when to take it.

Maybe I need to up the dose, and get more sleep.

This is the real reason I don’t want to be with anyone else.

I’m always, even if involuntarily, thinking of you.

And reaching out to you is a one way ticket to feeling the same with extra steps.

You don’t say anything.

No one on your side of the world says anything.

Just the police officers, and I don’t need to strike up a common cord with them.

If anything, they’d probably use that as evidence to arrest me again, if I were to ever visit.

But I have no good reason to visit.

I’d receive a warmer welcome in Sweden I’m sure.

And I have no good reason to visit there, either.

So what do I do?

I wanted to invite you to the spotify playlist I created, not that you’d add songs, or even listen to the music already there.

I just want to be involved with you in some way sometimes.

Like that would heal this open wound.

And I could be wrong.

You could direct all your venom and spite towards me maliciously, and I’m taken a back, but maybe,

maybe that would give me the closure I think I need as well.

I just don’t know, and that’s one of the worst things about this.

I feel like it would be a simple thing to just talk,

I’m not asking for your hand in marriage,

Just a dialouge,

but,

somehow,

asided from everything I’ve already done,

There’s some thorn in your side thats made you hate me,

long before my harrassment campaing had begun.

I apologize for however, and whenever I offended you.

Like I always say, I want you to be happy,

fulfilled,

full of joy,

and love.

I know that’s not possible 24/7,

but I hope most days in the week you’re doing alright, ya’know?

I’ll just be here,

Ten thousand miles away wishing things were different,

better,

but I’ll be fine I suppose.

I’m still here now.

Hold Me

I keep thinking, since yesterday, two days ago now, that I just want to hold you.

Even god won’t offer me that grace.

If I could just hold you, embrace you, maybe this suffering would go away.

As my mind travels and I write more “illusive ranting” I see a deep kiss.

No sex.

Or at least not sex in the common sense of the word.

My biceps yearn, and that yearning travels down into my forearms,

My palms,

The tips of my fingers ache to glide softly against your cheek,

Touch your hair.

How can I still love this deeply?

Where words flow like poetic prose?

Haven’t we heard this song enough?

Why is the record still broken?

Play a new song!

I’m begging you.

Play a new fucking song…