INVISIBLE WOMAN BLUES

Before I fall asleep at night, I close my eyes and wrap myself around you. I can feel your breath on my neck. In my mind it’s real, you are real. Just writing about it makes me stare at the wall for minutes at a time like I’m in a trance. Today I sat in a park for hours and wrote hundreds of words to you. I looked up and saw people staring. They’re always staring at me, pointing, trying to pry under my skull, trying to read my thoughts. I don’t let them. I will never let them get to you, don’t worry. I will never let them touch you. I will never sell you out.

Tonight I will be with you, entwined. Your smile will light one thousand jungles on fire. We will hover above the war-torn filth machine that this city is. In my thoughts I am invincible. When we touch, we are all things.

The sun is setting. The dirty air is clawing at my lungs. One thousand razored eyes try to rip me to shreds as I hurry along. I hear their tiny words as I pass.

“Look, he moves like a rat!”

I am almost to my hole. I will be with you soon. For now, this miserable thought will have to do. I have so much to tell you. It will take time and it will be fractured like me. I know you understand me.

I’m walking on a bridge. My back is to the sun, my face is to the abyss. Will you come with me? Demon sun burning my back with red eyes. My pupils being sucked out by the vacant spaces in their faces. We are the only ones left. Don’t let them scar you with their weakness. They will cripple you with their lives. They will make you want to die just to get away from them. They don’t know how dangerous they are. They are immune to their poison. That’s the way they keep doing it to each other life after life.

Sometimes I feel like glass—if I breathe too hard, I will implode. I can feel ground glass in my guts. I am an alien and I don’t remember the last time a human made me feel anything at all. Sometimes I feel frozen like a piece of iron. Like a factory that’s been shut down. Yeah, right now I am frozen. My thoughts are frozen fingers, like a spider made of ice. In your eyes I see a flame. It draws me to you. You are everything to me.

I sing songs to you. I live in front of strangers. They freeze me out, they empty me. I feel like an old warehouse. Do you want me?

 

Tonight
You and I walk together in the fall air
Street lamps throw down shadowed light
The leaves under our feet
Imagine that, for once not alone
I can close my eyes and see it
I can breathe in and smell the wood-burning fire
Miles away from this hotel room
The fake air that claws my throat
The grey walls that reduce my eyes to instruments of torture
Tonight, I am the king of self-infliction
You and I on this autumn night
I can’t talk to them
You should hear my words kill themselves
I cripple myself with them
The closer I get, the farther away I know I am

Tonight my heart incinerates my guts. My eyes freeze and burn in their sockets. Have you ever fallen into yourself and gotten lost? I’m so far from them, yet at times I wish for them. I wish I could understand them and deal with them without all the pain and bitterness that comes with contact. At times I wish for them to touch me. Strangers pass by me in this wounded leaking night.

They burn me, vile weaklings. I hide my face in my hands when they pass knowing my gaze would turn them to stone. They can’t stop my eyes from their righteous penetration. They see too much. I want to smash my head like a pig bank. Stick pins into my eyes and let it all pour onto the floor. There must be kindness in blindness because there is none here.