whatiwas

i wrote this in february on someone's couch.

i used to do it like this, half-dead love notes begun and cast aside
brimming over with want and woe and little else, ignoring the larger injustice of my next breath in favor of the inaudible twang of shattered dreams. i used to do it like this, naked, pressed to the linouleum, dreaming for an ending with that oft-sung-of innocent avarice but getting little more than flashes of the greater death that would soon become my raison d'--my dreams were only those, even then--you get used to abandoning hopes when you realize somewhere, somewhere, someone is abandoning their dream of being you, so you call it "the way it is" and tell yourself you tried your best and that you're only one human being who can only change what's closest to them--

i used to do it like that, letting my hopes dwindle into dusty remnants of a perfect world fated to never exist, pretending my own meaningless trail of oxygen and carbon dioxide was accomplishing enough by just wanting to be free.

i used to be it, godlike and unscathed, holding dominion over the enlightened select who dared challenge me by existing, i used to be freer than anyone ever knew, and that me, i imagine, is looking at this one from some unspecified and constantly shifting point in our neverending simultaneity and gaping at this past/future/present me wondering how i got so damn irrelevant.