You were the first person who ever really saw me

Now with you gone, I feel like I’m invisible again

Because no one else has seen me

Please, universe, throw me the fortuity

Of meeting women who are accepting

And enthusiastic about my

Second appearance

Shade envelops me under a cloudless sky

But it’s summer outside

And the sun is lining my sorrow

With the silver of golden light

Untethered

Withering

Boneyard

The graves shall make

A grave mistake

There is an almost too-still stillness

And I know it cannot last

It’s like when you see another driver

Who is seconds from colliding with you

But there is nothing you can do to stop it

And everything slows down

For a few too-long moments

Then CRASH

If you take my life and look at it from May to August, then speed it up, it will look like that. It’s almost like I’m experiencing bullet time, but on the long-term scale of life.

Intermezzo

Can you hear it?

Time dilation

Stretches out

The sound when

I am near it

Since I race

From one place

To the next

So I can clear it

The pain is like a ringing in my ears

A din that never disappears

It haunts me like a specter

Wailing in the emptiness

of the phantom limb

Where my relationship

Once was

Pensive, Lurid

Torrid, Abandon

I reflect on my defenses

And reinforce my fallen fences

But the wretched lure procures

A year’s worth of offenses

In a tiny little sliver of time

Beating once a month like a

Metronome of devastation

And here I station myself

Inured to the folly I’ve endured

Without ever keeping word

That future Marcus will abstain

I say I will, but don’t refrain

I can’t explain the pain that rains

Down like a train, colliding

With my brain —

The baleful refrain

That is my bane

serenity’s behind me

in extremity you’ll find me

in the wilderness again

though less bewildered than back then

i sowed a forest in the void

until the nothing was no more

and built a life that i enjoyed

and now i’ve burned it to the floor

but there is promise to be found

as ash decays into the ground

and breathes new life into the soil;

hope is wrought from pain and toil

For the first time, I can think of a reason to say fuck you.

This is big. I get to have self-respect. It fucking sucks, but I can’t respond by debasing myself and surrendering all my power.

So fuck you.

From zenith to nadir within a year, I fear

Though I won’t long stay here