I am drowning

there is no sign of land
you are coming down with me
hand in unlovable hand

and I hope you die
I hope we both die


Sometimes it occurs to me that I am pretending at this, all the time. Pretending to be calm, pretending to care, pretending that I am someone I am not. Most times I think that if you pretend to be something long enough then that is what you are, you know, that sooner or later you are not actually pretending, you are Being. What you do is what you are. I am calm, thus I AM calm. I am interested, thus I AM interested. I am a rational, understanding, committed partner that is on a team of two, heading toward a goal of I don’t even know what, by way of whatever seems safest, least likely to cause trouble, most likely to require absolutely zero piece of anything that really matters to me.

I never, in my whole life, have pretended to be angry. I have never pretended to care about something so deeply, with such ferocious determination, that I could taste the blood of it while I ingested it whole from the Universe and made it my own. I have never pretended any of that. I never pretended to pour myself into anything with such wholeheartedness that when it was gone, when it was done, I had to rebuild my insides from scratch and guess what, they don’t make the parts that I need. I have never pretended the heart stopping cold that comes with memories, triggered by the sound of a harmonica or the smell of salt or the sight of a ladder on a wall. Never. I wonder where my fire went, and whether anyone would understand if I pointed to this as the why.