La Dispute Why It Scares Me
At times I’ve shouted out unprovoked, at the world and you,
Just to see if the people around me react.
Sometimes I think they’re all acting,
At times I’m scared that I’m acting too. Like,
My movements or stage directions?
Was that a change in topic or a beat in a scene?
Have I been taking my emotional cues from a script I wrote at sixteen?
Maybe I just think about it all so much
That that the fear stays close to all the ghosts I’ve touched.
Makes me question
Was it love or just lust?
Caked in blood or old rust?
I don’t know.
Don’t we remember all the moments we remember the best
Framed in poems and in pictures, sang aloud in refrains?
Does this cycle of pain and disdain for the past
Not work exactly the same?
Maybe it’s just as much about what comes our way as it is how we react.
Just as much about the things that we’ve still got as it is about the things we lack.
I know, we won’t always keep around all we feel we need-
some are fading in frames, some were born to leave-
But if we’re still here, and we still breathe,
At least we’ve still got time to figure it out,
To know what to do,
To know how to feel,
Know the things that I’ve been making up inside my head,
And to know what’s real.
I want to believe that the way I am is just the way it goes.
For the things that came, not the things I chose
to come.
I want to know if I had any control.
I want to know if it’d comfort me.
And if my heart just stops, pack my memories in it-
I want to know all the love I’ve got.
And if my heart just stops, keep me alive for a minute-
I want to know if a curtain drops.
