flight and height and exasperation and compassion. i am perplexed.
warm nights. cool mornings. autumn leaves. pressed clothes. unkempt hair. sad eyebrows. subtle smiles. mossy roofing tiles. inconspicuous rain puddles. unforeseen declarations. obnoxious laughs. shy chuckles. long awaited tears. everything citrus. unplanned evenings. mechanical pencils. vanilla. bear hugs. philosophical debate. non-philosophical debate. brand new. extraterrestrial life. donna. the aesthetics of dilapidation. soy hot chocolates. faux judgement. small lies. her anorexic smile. the smallest of concerns finds a way of making itself heard. he worries and she shakes. silently screaming. ironically the clichéd melodrama renders itself redundant.

carefully. introspectively. you carve out the phrases too close to your heart.

complain. bitch. moan.

i just ache a lot right now, and i didn't want to say it because i thought maybe it would go away but its not and so this is where i settle. writing it down. maybe explaining it will lead to accepting it?
with my pills i go to sleep and struggle, my collar bones feel as if they're bending and i change position to relieve them only the sudden removal of pressure is like the final straw. i wake up, sore shoulders; they get this feeling in them i'd never experienced before arthritis so i don't know how to explain it. it's like, my arm falls out of place, and while it's gone walk about, a nerve fills the empty space, only then my arm snaps back and the nerve gets caught and it's a sharp, hot pain that lasts until i manage to find the right way to grind my arm back out and get the nerve away. it's not relief though, it's just different. what was sharp and hot turns to dull and heavy, i really have no words to describe it other than that, but after a good half an hour it fades and mutates into the bad growing pains of your teenage years - or maybe toothache, only it's accompanied by this warm sensation. you know when you go to bed with sunburn? not when the blankets rub your skin, it's not that, it's when your body heat seems to be radiating and absorbing, it's that and growing pains. my wrists, knees are similar. parts of my spine feel bruised. when i forget my pills my ankles join in and everything is worse, deeper. it all certainly reminds me why i don't want to live to an old age.
and so i'm taking those pain pills on top of the other things right? the panadol and codeine ones? only you're not supposed to stay on them for long and i think it's got a part to play in my feeling funny sometimes - maybe not, and you mentioned they eventually ruin your stomach and i suppose i sort of figured they would. but what else am i supposed to do, my medication that feels like injecting potent alcohol into my flesh, the one causing me to so easily get bruises and making me susceptible to cancers, is no longer working right, my doctor doesn't seem too concerned and i don't care what those cards in that restaurant say, hope isn't any better.

these words. they stick to the back of my throat. they make me ache. you. you stick to the walls of my heart. so heavy. it has been raining so frequently. i swear it's every day. but it's not the rain i want. there are no pretty skies. the blood from my veins, the marrow from my bones. these words they stick to the back of my throat. i want to shake you out of this. away from this. you. your harshest critic. i fear for you. don't lose what they say. when it's sweet but it's wrong. don't take it for the wrong. maybe the sentence is false. but maybe it's a love that's true. these words. my throat. i can't speak. i couldn't speak. that silence. it wasn't me giving up. i'm going about it all quiet. going about it all wrong. i've never been right. i don't know how. not with this. socially stunted i freeze. i cry so very often. i ache and i bleed and i get lost. but there is fire inside of me and i will defend you. i will love you to forever. you are so very brilliant and so very capable and you will be so very accomplished.

because things are pretty. and people are so very pretty. and it breaks my heart in the best ways.