Make your life a poem.
Autumn is coming. The hawthorn fruits have appeared already. I pick them up, thinking of you. Handful. It’s all I have.
Do you know what they smell like? After all these years they smell like nothing.
After all these years of walking towards a house in the middle of the woods, where so many unexpected things happened, so many intense emotions emerged, where so many painful events took place, it still feels like nothing.
I think, I’ll just wait for the hawthorn to wither.
Will I ever get there?
Believe me or not, but sometimes I speak to people that are not there. To people that my heart longs for, and who are far away. Whose faces fade away in memories that seem like dreams you never really had.
I wish they heard my thoughts back then when we were together. I wish they hear my thoughts right now when our minds are trying to find each other in the clouds.
Traffic lights. They lead me towards you, while I walk the walks you promised me. All alone, I’ve been captured in the town background, waiting for my shadow to follow me.
I might have figured out why I run away all the time. I might have figured out why I feel like I don’t belong anywhere. I was born in the wrong place.
Once I’d found it, I abandoned it… and never I shall touch it with my eyes. Never I shall listen to its silence. I wish I could go back in time.
A substitute is always a substitute.
So… it has come. I’ve got another job and I’m about to move to a place I’ve wanted to move to for the past few months. Why am I not excited then? Like I was in my dreams when I was imagining it all? Suddenly, choosing furniture and paintings on the walls seems to be like obligation, not pleasure.
I finally broke out of the place that, I thought, had been suffocating me. I expected to walk out with no regrets, stepping into a new life lived on my own rules. Instead, everything is wrong. Since I left a place where everyting was familiar. Since I left people who, I didn’t realize, were like family to me. Since I couldn’t stop crying for five days.
In such haste, I forgot to give it a second thought. Where was the point to relocate to very much the same job but in a different place? In a huge nameless company where no one remembers your name. Where you’re just a number on a paper wall. Where you cannot really progress and grow your skills. Where you are assigned to a position created by your past, not by your interests. Where you cannot really show your creativity and ability.
Am I living delusions again?
The truth is, only you know yourself, only you know who you really are. All the new people that you meet, they know nothing about you. They just look at your face and either like it or not. They judge your expression and the level of disability read from your resume.
How long will I survive?
Will the fear go away? Will I feel safe in the place, where I expect to find a home?
Oh, God… I’m such a bad blogger. Forgive me.
What if I’m not alive
if it’s not reality
if I imagined all this.
What then?
I’ll wake suddenly
among the desert [of souls]
not knowing who I am
unable to see.
What if it’s a dream
if I lived an illusion
meeting other people’s needs.
What then?
I’ll wake suddenly
among the ocean [of bodies]
not knowing who I am
unable to swim.
What if it’s not my life
if I lived not being myself
if I forgot who I am.
What then?
I’ll wake suddenly
among the woods [of bones]
not knowing who I am
unable to walk.
© W. Donovan
I said nothing
When I looked in its eye
my body vanished
leaving me bare.
I said nothing
…
© W. Donovan
I climbed the highest building
fighting down my fears
of falling to the void
where I lived without you.
I sat on the edge
risking everything I had
only to show you
how bright the sky was.
I waited there
for you to show up
so I could tell you
the words I kept in my chest.
But I’d fallen asleep
waiting for you
and my dreams
were full of stories
I couldn’t remember.
None of them
looking like you.
They had skin ripped off
from their faces.
Screaming out
painfully blurred words.
And you were there
squeezing my hand
so hard I could feel the pain
running through my veins.
You brought me to the light
where everyone could see us
bleeding out together
and they did nothing.
So, I stood there
let them gnawing on your bones
until you disappeared
appeared in my nightmares.
© W. Donovan
telling yourself you were fine you suppressed your emotions trapped them in a tape you didn't want to play ever again.
~ lost memories
Sometimes I wonder if it was even worth sacrificing so much. Sometimes I wonder if you didn’t do it just for yourself. Because you were afraid of being left alone. You feared that I wouldn’t call you again.
~ letters
© W. Donovan
Painted Poems 