I'm not sure why I'm even writing this. But I guess it feels right. It sort of feels like an exorcism. That's why I'm writing you a letter, and it's getting darker. I'm getting worse and worse. I had a reason for the writing, but trying to exorcise my demons didn't work. To try to rid me of the worry, and to purge you out of wonder for the future and the hurt. I wrote a poem:

I'm increasingly aware I've been painting things in gray,
I'm increasingly alarmed by the pain, I'm increasingly alive
To every cloud up in the sky, I'm increasingly afraid it's going to rain.

See, lately I've hated me for over-playing pain.

For always pointing fingers out at everyone but who in fact is guilty

and for picking at my scabs like they could never break

but they can and they will
And I'll spill like a leak in the basement, a drunk in the night choir,
Just slur all those words to make deadbeat that sweet old refrain,
Self-inflicting my pain and therein lies the real shame;

I heard when they were picking through the rubble finding limbs,

they sang hymns, but now
Of what do I sing? The worry, the wonder, the shortness of days,

The replacement for purpose, the things swept away by
The worry, the wonder, my slightness of frame,

The replacements for feeling, The casual lay.

And the worst of the wildlife wears clothes and can pray and the worry, the wonder,
For three meals a day. Only death unimpeded, not slowing it's pace,
Brings that petty, old worry and wonder away.

I've been thinking too much of you. I've been thinking of crossing the bridge and not turning back. After sundown, before sleeping, I am the worst of me. I am a mess. What I haven't done, what I've wanted to, and what I fear you have becomes reality here.

No love, no life, no history. Just touch, just chemistry, just a roaring undercurrent simple and sensory. Young bodies, warm skin, perfect symmetry and it's a moment, harmless. It's energy. It's like medicine, It's self-discovery

But the only warmth is a warmth alone, and it's only temporary, that fleeting feeling of warmth, just a flash before the line gets blurry, a longing for more. I want to feel it out. I want to know how it works. I want to know if it was worth it to worry, about the ghosts I feared would haunt the memory, about the damage that I'm sure the fear has done to me now. I want to know what it is in me that won't follow through, those nights the instinct takes a hold of me and pushes too. Maybe it's only that I've never gotten over you.

Or am I still scared?

I only know I never wanted to get left behind. Just trying to feel it out. Trap the healing in whatever bed we end up in. Every reason to leave this place behind, why I should be alone, are made of flesh and bone. We will rise again from ashes one day, until then just throw me away. I need to leave but swear I will carry you with me until the end.

It's true, I've made a tale of it here, still, it's a little unclear who's been haunting who. And time can be such a funny thing, always moving to the future, glorifying the past and amplifying the pain in frames and glass. So was our touch half as sacred as I've made it seem, or just another fabrication of a half-dream? Just those chemicals, the adolescent love. Just us trying to grasp onto meaning, onto a purpose.

See, all the secrets I keep, why are they secrets?

Was it that I got too tired of the consequence?
Everybody has to let go at one time. I wonder when I will.