These Black and Blue Days are the Most Beautiful

There’s a simplicity in these days that would be beautiful if it wasn’t so tragic. It’s funny, you know, the years and years I longed for this very thing—easy independence. The ability to come and go as I pleased and not owe an explanation to anybody. No one to ask where I was or what I was doing or even if I was okay. The satisfaction that comes from taking care of yourself, financially and otherwise. The “I can do whatever I wants” are so hollow to me now.

Am I still searching for some arbitrary value or have I given up such futile quests?
I suppose if I have to ask that question then the answers are yes and no, respectively.
And I sigh with exasperation.

Why is it that I do my best writing under these kinds of circumstances?
It’s as if I need to tap into some kind of font of melancholy in order to have something to say.
In order to say what I want to say how I want to say it.
Artists do tend to be depressive types.

“I wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend. You could cut ties with all the lies that you’ve been living in.”

I talk to myself as much as I talk to others.

Is this weird? Sitting here on this bench in the glaring sun, laptop resting on jeans. The brightest October sun I’ve ever seen beating down on purple-sheathed arms. I see myself reflected in my screen and for some reason I don’t think I’ve ever looked more like me. Strange, seeing as how I’ve got gel in my hair and makeup on my eyes. A purposeful mask. Where does one image start and the next end? Where do you start and I end? How can the lines be so delineated and yet so blurred?

“Everyone I know has got a reason to say, put the past away.”

The grass is puffy, you know the kind. The fall asleep outside Burger King at 19 after the first real bar hop kind. That kind. Only now it’s the hottest part of the day in a month that isn’t supposed to be hot and it’s just not the same. A country of contradictions, I’ve said it before. The hottest afternoon we’ve had in quite a while and marigold leaves behind me. I suppose that’s why I love it here so much. Pathetic fallacy once again. This place mirrors me in every possible way.

I rather enjoy chandelier earrings and fierce eyes and blasting music at 4am.

And she reapplies her lip gloss slowly. It's a dance. Intended to insight a specific reaction. She's aware of the effect she has. She shrugs, again.

If you walked by me right now what would you see? And why is it that I’ve always had this almost morbid fascination with seeing myself how other people see me?And why the hell is it that I self-identify most with tragic beauty? Could I be any more film noire if I tried?

And let me live my own personal Casablanca, here’s looking at you, kid.

Why am I like this?
Glass eyed Black Dahlia, once again.
Wistful sigh.
Wishful thinking.
Why?

My cheeks are flushed and I’m listening to the same song on repeat. Fingers bounce off keys with practised nonchalance. I’m shocked that the wireless reaches all the way over here.

“The angry boy, a bit too insane, icing over a secret pain.”

Yeah, that’s a story I know well. Flip the pronouns and you’re talking about me.
What we can’t see in ourselves we see in others.

“Well, he's on the table, and he's gone to code, and I do not think anyone knows what they are doing here. And your friends have left, you've been dismissed. I never thought it would come to this, and I, I want you to know. Everyone's got to face down the demons. Maybe today, we can put the past away.”

There’s a chorus for all ages if I ever heard one.

“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.” Karl Marx at his best that is, and yet maybe...maybe one day.

It’s hot out here and I want to go back inside but I don’t want to go back inside because it’s real in there and I like it here. Outside. Here where I can fake it for a while. Here where I can sew stitches in my own story. Here where I can believe that fluttering leaves are fairies and no one can tell me any different.

Why can’t I live in a forest?
Why can’t I be sitting up to my hips in an ocean?
Why is there concrete and not rotting leaves or sand?
Why here, why now?

There’s a girl, a woman, no, a girl sitting on a bench. She’s dressed to make a “don’t fuck with me, I’m hot and I know it” impression. But she’s not just dressed in clothes. She has an air of something around her, something that she both wraps around herself and finds herself enveloped in. It suffocates her and she claws to get out but as soon as she peaks out over the haze she remembers how much more comfortable it is to be choking when you’re choking on something you understand. She accuses him of running away when she’s doing the same thing. She personifies lies. She doesn’t know how much of her own strength is built on illusion. Smoke and mirrors. Slights of hand. Who is she when that gets stripped away? She’s a caricature of the her she wants to be. She’s a masochist to her very core—asphyxiating herself on self-inflicted grief, guilt, and loss.

How many ways can you rip a life apart? And why is it that I so enjoy purposely breaking so that I can put myself back together? It’s egoism to the extreme and it’s sickening.

“You're the first to fight, you're way too loud, you're the flash of light on a burial shroud. I know something's wrong.”

Lay yourself bare with words on a page. Once again.
Fail to internalize the lessons. Once again.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat. For all time.

I've never been afraid to feel pain, but happiness? True happiness? My god, that scares me more than anything else in the world.

“I wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend.”