I sit there looking up at the same piece of sky I'd seen
Since i was nine,
Only this time through the secret fumes at 2 am.
The same spot among the clouds where I used to find faith
I now look up to find crimson clouds drifting slowly by,
The night is silent.
No drunk twenty year old stumbling back home
No yellow lights from the balcony opposite mine,
No books to get back to, no best friend either.
The abyss remains, swirling up and down, more up than down
But I don't have you around to tell me it'll be okay.
Loss hits me years too late,
When it happens, I'm busy moving on with life
Until it crawls back years later and creeps up on me
Reminding me of what I've lost.
In the mornings though, in the harsh happy sunlight,
I count what I still have, what I am grateful for.
I use my fingers to clutch on to a pen, a keyboard, a cigarette,
Anything that helps me make sense of what
This whole deal is.
Sometimes it feels like nothing.
Blank pages scare me now, they tell me they need to be filled and I,
I have lost my words.
I've left them behind in the race to live, the race to meet goals and deadlines
And in the futile hopes of saving the world.
People scare me now, they come with so much grief
So much that it adds on to mine and pins me down.
I want to write of happier things, words that can move,
poems that make you feel alright again,
But I can only paint flowers with bright shades of pink and yellow
I can only turn the pages, look at them and say
Here, I've made something that looks happy, please be happy now won't you.
It scares me when I think of how darkness is elemental.
How even when there's light, darkness is just a flick away, it's the natural state of being.
Light takes effort to sustain.
What if it is the same with happiness?
Happiness takes effort, and for the life of me,
I can't write happy.
What does that mean?