Your words are funhouse mirrors.
They twist and warp,
presenting distortions back at me.
I’m not sure whether to laugh
or scream.
Outside our carnival tent,
sun dries dropped sodas
and hot dog buns.
Small birds peck crumbs
and seem happy.
Inside, darkness swallows
our maze of glass
like a python constricting.
Shatter, serpent!
Cut yourself to pieces.
The sky was orange as the sun set over the carnival. Pink sprouted up from the horizon as a glint of white from the wing of a seagull caught my eye, slowly tempering a landing from the gusty winds to a piling out by the shoreline.
What was I doing here again?
The breeze on the Ferris wheel softly blanketed my legs, blowing tufts of loose hair out of my face, while the anxiety beckoned ever so much within my mind. Burnt orange dispersed through the clouds, the smell of popcorn filling the air, and the stickiness of sweat and sugar clinging to the backs of my thighs on this plastic seat urged me to release them from their restless prison.
And you, looking so distantly away from me. Wishing you were somewhere. I tried not to look. I found you this way so many times recently, falling into deep pitfalls of silence and never fully recovering from the underlying current of our company.
"What is it that you want me to say?" you remarked when I finally admitted to it.
And the fact is you do deserve someone so much better than me, but you can't see it for some reason. Only I do.
"That you forgive me...?" I cautioned with a cheeky half grin.
"Unbelievable," were the words I had heard you repeat to yourself over the following weeks. Yet still, you never left.
I think it's finally sunk its way deep within your core, here, at the carnival in the meditation of the sunset, hollowing you out like a flute to be muted by the underbelly of the earth. I can see the reflection of the sky's vibrant colors in your eyes, and wonder if the colors will internalize and cause a channel for your anger to flow outward unto me. I've defeated you, I can tell, and I realize that I've been here before. That I'm doing it again.
“I can see the reflection of the sky’s vibrant colors in your eyes, and wonder if the colors will internalize and cause a channel for your anger to flow outward unto me.”
I stare at my fingernails looking for an explanation for you, or the courage to tell you to leave me, but I can't. I'm scared. I attempt to read my future through the lines in my palm, and trace the lines with my thumb until each one crosses, but it just leads me back to the same place where I originally began. I look up midtrace to find you staring at me.
"Why don't you love me?" you blurt, as soon as the Ferris wheel shuts to a stop. We're overlooking the beach now, and I can tell how easy it's been to use it as a distraction.
"I have love for you," I explain softly, "but I don't know what I want from anyone right now. What I want from myself..."
"But you know that you don't want me," you interject sharply. "That's something we can both confirm at this very moment."
The truth was that I very absolutely could not confirm that.