i hope you forget

i hope you forget, in the long run, that i'd ever helped you with anything, because you'd never let me forget it, and you'd never leave my side. i know your type of loyalty – i know you're going to be here long enough for me to scratch myself out of my skin and yell from the top of my lungs for you to listen to me listen to me listen to me, you idiot, listen to what i can't say or understand or think of or watch me when i'm around you – just tell me, you bloody fool, just tell me please what this is, what this all is and just listen to how i shriek, how you tear me apart so viciously and heartlessly, just listen to what you do to me

and it isn't even because of your smile, or your anything – it's because of how i smile because of you, and it's all me from you that wrecks every nerve of my being. it's your arm when it's around me, not the safety or the comfort or the warmth – really, i don't know, i have no right to say "it is" or "it isn't," because you are such a trick of light, and you turn me into an ape traipsing between "this is it" and "this will never be it" –

you make me so stupid
you make me so blind
you make me so deaf
you make me so warm

i hope you forget how it was a song nobody knew or could even hear over the sound of a million whispercaresses floating in the air. i hope you forget the closeness – just a couple of feet – i hope you forget the way everyone looked that night, i hope you forget how you didn't say a word. i hope you forget about small eyes and big eyes and size and just everything, i hope you forget about things that pull you away from me sometimes (oh, yes, i know, how so very possessive, m – oh, you know it, you know i am)

do everything, do everything you feel like – and although i say so, don't ever forget a single thing. don't you dare do that for me. i'm afraid of being away from you, is all

(there, I just said it, i'm scared you'll forget about me – didn't you see that?)

Another Wrinkle in Time

he was, in all ways, carried by
the waves of time:
sailing on and on in his boat of skin;
he looked below,
and lo and behold,
creased blue ripples so akin
to the wrinkles his aged face brings
to the view of an average stranger.

it seems the clock had been malleable,
for time had stretched far and wide:
panic had gripped him, and its chiding had
struck him,
dumb and a little less than alive

a thunderstorm came, and the ocean was hideous
and rude, and cruel, and a lot more than vicious!
so his white hair grew paler
and his wrinkles sank deeper;
and he'd blown all the clock's hands backwards –
he cried,
"oh, time, confound you! wait just a little bit longer!"

and so the lightning gathered up all its power
and exploded into the morning
and painted the sky with vivacity and precision,
and seven different kinds of vibrance
and in all this beauty, he had not noticed
that his skin had raced to crumple
and his hair had rushed to whiten
and his fingers had ached to tremble
and that his soul was a little worn-out
and breaking along his body's cracks

but! his boat had come ashore
land and sand all by his lonesome, at last
and the castle of the alchemists once more,
just like how he'd dreamed in the past
he knocks with all the knocks his body can muster
and he finds the best of them, of all the alchemists
she asks,
"how can i help you, sir?"
and he says, all certain,
"Immortality, please."
and she nods, a sweet smile on her lips
– a flower, more than anything –
she asks,
"would you like peace with that?"

next is a flat kind of beeping,
like the calmest of tornadoes
and the quietest of hurricanes.
steady, steady, steady – right.

oh, god. it is the machinery that betrays him.