with out regret

Maybe I’ve been fooling myself when I say that I’ve tried to change, maybe this is the only way I know how to be.

I don’t believe in good or evil people, I don’t believe extremes exist in anything with out its opposite.

I no longer believe that anything lasts forever in this life. But it’s not the way it sounds.My mind used to push that reality away for fear of losing these things, these people around me. But I’ve come to realize everything is a cycle, so when things end it only gives them a chance to begin again.

People tell me I’ve changed, I want to believe them. I suppose in some ways I have changed, or else I would not be here today. I would not have survived on the road I was on. But yet I know at my core, those things that threatened to destroy me are not at all gone, only more balanced.

Sometimes I tire of this balancing act.

The pulls of life and death in me are not subtle, but extreme. I must work every day to keep the destruction in check, or else lose myself in the pull. Sometimes I wish I could throw myself into the violent extremes.

I attempted to once, and I know I would not survive it again.

Yet sometimes I find myself resentful of this line I must walk, that is so much thinner than most. Resentful of the calm with in me that just cannot seem to be touched.But I can no longer believe in the battle between body and soul.

Everyday I drown my self in words and pictures of pain and anger, letting my sorrow encompass me. I know exactly what my sadness smells like and I can always recall the way she turns her self round and round beneath my ribs, looking for a place to settle.And the way she never finds it.

I become so intent on identifying her that I neglect her twin.

I wonder what happiness would look like if I painted it? It would not be of cozy things, or bright and beautiful flowers.

It would not be a hallmark world with warm winter cabins, fake smiles, and cartoon tears. I am as weary of artificial peace as I am tissue paper angst.The deceptions we build, of never ending bliss, send me running again to the side of despair because some how it all seems more true. Because black seems more final and less fragile.

Because bleeding is safe.

It makes me smile when I feel joy, because it seems so strange. And it reminds me that I forgot to remember to live and maybe stop dying for a while.

It reminds me to stop thinking “if things were this way” “If I were shorter” “if my ribs protruded just a bit more…” and instead find peace in my own smallness.Maybe my happiness would glow the way snow does on its own.

Maybe it would be the color of his eyelids just before he awakes, just before dreams leave them.

The way your hand rests on my chest to make sure I am still breathing, that I am still here, that I exist.

Today my joy would be a moth, of dust and light.
Silk and porcelain.

Flashing in the moonlight, spinning in so many circles, falling towards the fire, with out fear and with out regret