Can you stop it?

 

I can’t breathe. No, I can’t go on. I hope you understand.

My life, with you, is in a paper bag, in-and-out hyperventilation.

 

You can’t find the answers. Let it be—

 

Oh, you agree it’s a riddle, and yet you feign sanity as if the weight won’t crush you like a boysenberry. Splat! Blood and unwillingness everywhere.

 

Look! The shrubbery is green, the flowers are trying desperately to hold-on to Spring, but that blessed time has passed.

The ever-present avoidance. 

Yes, nature, a glorious magic spell. I am aware, but please.

 

Why, because two espressos, and the morning’s black and white print, reading between the lines, makes you self-assured. In the meantime, the sky went grey hiding from a pessimistic interpretation.

 

To the contrary!

The sun called my name, and I was singing its praises.

I was spinning in optimism, about to create seven perfect days ahead.

You, however, toil for whatever tidbits the world feeds you, gullible—a sponge for imaginary gossip.

 

That’s your problem in life, taking it for something it is not intended to be. Dreaming of Eden.

Hard work and planning, I tell you! 

I wish you’d wake-up in the truth far from expectation and madness.  

 

When in the end, the plan of hard work and no pleasure are a tombstone and daisies?
Honestly, I would not die from your silence. Being captive in its daily oppression is overrated.
Do you remember being inquisitive, less stringent?  

 

I recall more space in your voice for reason, less bitterness, long locks of auburn hair that embraced simplicity sweetly, a blade of grass, the vase-center table with tulips.

 

Before I became a victim! A scissor for a tongue, cut-out replicas of a heart,

tore to pieces, and the hardness in bones that struck the core, oh such pain

inflicted by arrogance.


Sorry.

(Black, shark eyes, no emotion. There is no sincerity in apologies). As if I could believe, and even if possible, would no longer want to. This time I will be a bird, courage, soaring into a time that is generous with love, reciprocity, a field that never ends in gratitude, sees me as fragile and simultaneously powerful, then takes me to its heart—a new home.

Unphased. Imagine his silence—

I will clear the gutters before the storm, board the windows, keep nature and life far from us.

I shudder at the earth that never moves inside of him, even on fire. For this, I can always
trust—insipidness, steadfast in the things that hold us secure in mediocrity.

I want to die, at least, in the fever of reckless abandon.

Each step was carved-out in the endless days of years that passed too quickly, and I, waiting, always waiting, for the one thing to save me, lost myself in the process.

I adhered to expectation, stretching only my fingers and toes to brush the excitement of a churning sea or dreaminess of a Marigold. I remained sincere to fear, and the guilt that prevented ever fully submerging and emerging.

I am confident that I could breathe underwater living as I imagine:

Free from solid ground, as a yellowtail fish, a seeking white gull, as salt in waves, and mist in the air, the moon when it rises—the whole majesty, or each star’s wish,

and the glorious sun like an urgent heat that falls onto shoulders embracing a new day.

I want to be who I am unapologetic, free from the memory, delighted in a moment.

 

Maria Pisciotta-DellaPorte ©2020 All Rights Reserved