this is the way i will leave you

i came home. sick. all the lights were on. everyone was in bed.
tell me this isn't what it's like.
tell me that i'm lonely.
tell me something and stop listening to me.
you never understood me.
this is the struggle. this is the sick. this is the lonely.
this is where one person turns to another and says, "you've been gone for so long. why don't you go back home?"

i can't take my eyes

whatever it was that you said doesn't matter. i have already forgotten. it has come to be my turn to pull out my skeleton and watch it soak in the sunlight for a while, not for too long, so that i can be sure it will be strong for those who need it more than i do now.

they need me to drive with them. it is twelve hours away. it is far up on a hill in the graveyard. they need to take me there so that they can remember. i want to take them. they will tell me the way. they always tell me the way.

of course the sky cannot separate us from the ground, the trees, the lions, it cannot separate us at all. we are all just a crowd. it's the same way that we see the clouds. the sky sees us and pretends we're something entirely different. it is nice to think of all of us, our entire history, our family, all of us as being thought of as something completely different. we're just passing crowds to the sky. passing off into corners where our skin is dried and we have no sense, no senses. we have nothing.

still, i am off to drive with them, twelve hours, so that i will change. change is coming. this is the part of me that needs to be rougher and wrinkled. this is the part of me that needs.