Look, I'm just trying to get home, okay?

I don't want to hear your stupid comments. I don't want your shitty catcalls. Leave me the fuck alone.

Don't talk about what I'm wearing.
Don't talk about my hair.
Don't ask me to come over there.
Don't get pissed when I ignore you.

Fuck you.

Saying rude shit about me when I don't respond to your comments isn't going to make me like your hipster douchebag ass any better. It's not going to make me want your shitty beard, shitty newsboy cap or shitty personality.

If you want to talk to me, try saying 'Hi'. Like a human being.

Why the fuck can some men not grasp this simple as shit concept?

Worn.

The comfort of continually being on the edge.

Cling to this; fingers white, the head and heart sparking against each other. A grind of hurt and fear.

Falling. A million times over.

This is no rescue mission.

My hopes get sent flying when I see the numbers come up; sky rocket - flash and fade.

And to me, it seems so simple. But that's the issue. I can navigate these places like I've lived here for ages and more, my compass is on point and my constellations are so cold and clear.

But these are unknown to you. You're hiding in the hills while you pore over the map another time. I'm the one with the territory advantage.

I don't blame you but it doesn't stop the urgent need to pierce through it; to blow away the clouded breaths and slowness.

I don't blame you... but I do.

This fight.

Circles.

Sometimes I get jealous.

We were kids.

She lives that perfect, eggshell-smooth life. A sorority, strong family ties, regular vacations, a Southern belle sort of perfection. Down to the last detail. Not even a single drink or cigarette in any of her photos.

That cleanness. I bet her house smells like vanilla and cinnamon all the time.

Is it envy or a weird kind of fascination?

I don't know that sort of white sheets, ultra clear kind of confidence. I've always been more glass, more little pieces.

It's not that I believe that her life is perfect and neither do I want to have it, but I just can't help but be absolutely interested in how cleanly cut it all is. How? How do some edges end up so smooth, so seamless? That oddly appealing vanilla?

Jeans that get ironed. A linen closet. A puppy picked from a breeder. Monogrammed stationery. Marathons.

Why does this interest me so much.

Is it because it's so opposite from myself? Almost comically so? My carelessness and paranoia, wrapped up and tied together... liquid courage, shifting seas, drums beating out the silence - arrows and crooked smiles and glimmering motes floating through the haze.

Connected dots in a haphazard, sporadic fashion - very few straight lines leading from point A to B without a running, flashing firework dashing it away.

Slow motion bursts. Tiny shrapnel.

I wouldn't trade. But I can't look away. Is it the lack of chaos that interests me? The simplicity of it? How incredibly well branded it is?

Short fuse, big smile. Strange days.

It is haunting me.

Still.

That city.

Those words.

And every time I think about it, the wires that sparked and illuminated so harshly, the letters that flickered through my head, the clouds come rolling through.

An empty gesture.

Divert these thoughts.

It dissolves into anger.

It always does.

Why can't you just say the right things? Why can't you be what you're supposed to be?

I get so angry. Every word is a trigger, every sentence is the line of gasoline. I'm made of gun powder and you're the flame.

One without the other doesn't work but together it causes such damage.

You're surprised every time.

How do you make so fucking angry? It races through my blood; that hopeless seething that burns all bridges and marks it path where it passes. Uncontrollable.

The need to finish this business.

New Years is perpetually bittersweet.

The direction towards home.

To meticulously untangle the knots in my hair; untangle the thoughts that have gotten caught in the rush, caught in the haze of being away.

Of being elsewhere.

When I hear your voice on the phone, through wires and crackling, it brings me back. The arrows are sharper now, they dig deeper now; no blow softened by the dream haloed roads and fields. The places we pass by through grey rains and mountainsides.

A road travelled.

Why it upsets me, I don't know. I wish I could tell you why it feels like you pull me harshly back into this level every time we interact. Even from across an ocean, even through my scheduled days and slept in mornings. Even through all this space and openness.

I wish I could.

You ruined me.

You ruined me in the way only someone like you could have.

I always had them strung from my fingers; a distance away so I could never get too hurt, too attached. Soft, loaded words that slipped over sheets and curled around my mind, my body.

Always the upper hand.

Sometimes I feel physically sick from how incredibly intimate this all is. I was such a rock, such a stoic asshole. How is it that you've crept in and made yourself at home? Under all my locks, under all these previous engagements that kept me conveniently at an arm's length.

I miss you.

How?

---

She, on the other hand, is a different story. The living personification of how I used to think. Like so many others, then and now.

Sharp edges, self-serving anger and just the right amount of narcissism to come across as confident.

The older I get, the more I just look away.

Taking the high road is so unsatisfying because she still resides in me sometimes, aching to lash out at even the most minor infraction of these self-imposed rules. The look, the disgust at everything and everyone.

You don't fool me anymore.

No.

You're waiting to get that glory, to take that anger out on to anything that will stay still long enough for you to sink into for even a moment. Anything to be self-righteously mean.

The little girl grows into a wolf.

The older I get, the more the acid subsides. A sudden flash and then it's gone. A wisp of what would have been a national disaster.

You're not protecting yourself this way. If I could take you to where I've been and show you the burn marks, the fury and the destruction; where I came to and how it all came together.

Promises broken to let something else grow in their places. Something better. Make it better.

Sometimes a sigh is all I have left. Expelling the comforting inside to shift and mingle with the frightening outside.

Tomorrow is for me now, not your teeth and hurt.

Tomorrow.

I tiptoe around you.

Tiny slivered eggshells where the weight was too much. White and shattered, porcelain pieces where I failed to be more careful.

Be more careful.

The disdain I used to feel for girls like this. The advice I would have given.

Words I would have written, letter by letter, inked out on a satin ribbon across my chest. Pageant queen for the self-righteous. Tied across my eyes, even in the beginning. Even when I swore I knew better.

I knew better.

This little island has been stormed and claimed over and over again. These walls were breached, these shores were worn into this shape forced by the crushing footprints and clinging fingers that scaled these heights.

These flags were battered.

An aching, filtered light that blinded me while I searched on my hands and knees for the pieces of things I kept so close, so dear. The haze was smokey and sweet, it creeps into my mouth and wraps itself around my body until I can't remember what it was like to think unaffected. To think clearly.

Sharp thoughts kept fiercely and at my side, always ready to reflect and defend. Sharpened to a fine point; a needle into the soft skin of anything that threatened this built-up empire. I built this from my own hands, my own back. I took every misgiving, every heartache and shaped it into another layer.

The dependency on the enemy to stay behind their own lines.

An unexpected allowance.

Repetition.