invisible things

can i not be liked in earnest?

what does it feel like, to fear being touched in the soul, and then left stranded, alone on the other side of it? you rebuild. thicker this time. so that no one could ever throw it down again. so that they would fear you, fear your mind, fear your soul, to the point that even the soul ceases to exist as something graspable. unmaterial. nothing, floating in the wind.

i am the air. i am the wind. fleeting, moving, giving the lightest breeze across their faces, and yet they cannot catch me. no one can. i don’t let them. i don’t want them to even try.

or do i?

because i speak about it. i am obsessed with it. convinced of my lonely future, and yet that very conviction is the tell. i want someone to prove me wrong. because in the end, that is what my soul craves. recognition. and yet i never place myself in the position to receive it. i see what i do, i move the perspective, shift the focus onto their lives, so that mine will not be spoken of. i ask about their days and their past, so that i will not have to speak of my years of solitude and anger.

for my whole existence i have believed that opening up to others means only one thing: fading. that i would lose pieces of myself to them. then i found the spark again. and i fear it might be false. i fear the wind has stolen it once more, that circumstances swept it sideways before i could hold it. was it ever real? how could it leave so easily? how could it leave me, it, too? left behind by everything. by everyone. and nothing cares. i thought maybe someone would. maybe after the spark reignited enough times, i would finally be liked. can i not be liked in earnest? in the long run? am i not worth it?

my thoughts gnaw at me, and while they feast i try to forget, to resurface inside the comfortable lie of my own life. this was the fading game. to be let down, to be broken, to be left. that is the game i fear i might have already lost. and i fear it is not the being alone i have been rehearsing, that was a lie too, spoken out into the open air. it is all lies, lies, lies, lies.

why can i not find the truth even here? there is none. everywhere, deception.

i am the fraud. i so despise the lie i am.

and because thoughts make us, and i have thought myself into nothing, i remain only soul and bearer, eaten by invisible things that desire nothing more than my mere downfall.

was i so high above the water that i thought i was about to fly? to be free from everything, and cry with the relief of it, because life ought to be good to me too, once? was i so naïve, so stupid, thinking all this? the self-confidence i have built across these years, shattered by the outline of a mirage, a ghost asking why i have fallen yet again. how high still will i have to fall before i feel the wounds pinning me back to the last neglected pieces that remain tethered, for one last instant, to the weave of the empyrean sky.

am i heavy with despair and melancholy, or am i light, lost from any meaning and colour, lost from no one, from nothing? will they ever look at the night sky and remember i once existed, briefly lived inside their lives? was i a fallen star, rotting away, a fleeting moment in a single orbit, remaining with a cold heart that is just stone, never the burning fiery light, as far from warmth as light can get from what might have been remembered.

dead. dead on the inside.

and all around, everything engulfs itself and flinches away.

have i not in me the hunger to be seen, to become something worth naming, worth retaining? am i not worth this life i see and aspire toward?

am i not worth it?

am i not worth it?

i am lost. i am lost to the deflation of my own dreaming.

dying in a long-lost instant that reverberates through the eyes of those who do not care.