Words

Words have a lasting impact, 
even the most seemingly insignificant ones.

Simple sentences morph into occult scars
that radiate with permanence and persistence within our heads.
Intrusive echoes left to remind us
of days long past and moments long gone.

Mere words become our
blessings and burdens.

Easily spoken,
yet impossible to forget.

Retellings

Sometimes you begin to tell me a story that you've already told me, but I let you continue. 

I just nod, smiling, appearing as though everything you're telling me is brand new. Yet if I'm being honest, I don't truly listen to the words. I listen just enough so that I seem attentive, I keep my responses bland and short.

However, I use those times to study you, encapsulate your voice, absorb all your mannerisms and expressions. I watch the way you create each syllable rather than hear the meaning behind them. I focus on everything about you except the content of your speech.

For those precious moments I will never stop you from retelling me your story.

I'm simply grateful to be able to hear you tell them to me twice.

Despondent

While your despondent eyes 
were cast downward,
I glanced at you as you held my hand.

Solemnly you watched as your pale finger rhythmically rubbed the soft skin
alongside the base of my thumb.

Your gaunt stare immediately
imprinted itself into my mind,
haunting me as a witness
to pure hopelessness.

We sat there together if only for a moment...

My words stifled.


Your silence deafening.

Ignorance

When you learn a new word, 
suddenly it's everywhere.

You see it appearing on signs

around your all too familiar town...
You hear it echoing from a stranger's
mouth in another room...
You suddenly notice it blatantly staring
back at you from the pages in a book
you've read five times before...

But it's not coincidental.

It's simply the ignorance
to what you've always overlooked
beginning to fade away.

One Hour

In sixty minutes the sharp cascade 
of volatile thoughts will cease
and I'll no longer be gagging
on the anger trapped
in the back of my throat.

My illogical rage cannot be challenged
with basic breathing techniques
and mundane meditative counting.

My only remedy is time.

So give me one hour...
Sixty minutes...
3600 fucking seconds...

And then I'll be okay.