empty ocean, empty sky, empty soul

Those words or these meanings behind them. Those handprints on scraped up glass. That reflection on this dirty old mirror. The marks left in the pattern that everything else set, forcing it to change. I didn't earn any of that.

And don't deserve it, do I? Not now...

Maybe there'll be some sunset over some hill somewhere. Some giant's ribs - waiting to tell me that it's all okay. A faint rainbow in some sky someday to promise to never destroy me like that again. Some net full on the other side of the boat, where I forgot to try. Maybe there'll be some little ender wiggin to save this little fragile world too.

Or. Maybe there'll just be the stagnant air, the look of the way life is here, and the flood that keeps filling this little sphere anyway. Despite the screaming. Despite the crying. Despite the kicking and the climbing and the gnawing. Over all the noise of every city I've ever fell in love with. Over the smell of fish in the wharf where I didn't. Above the smog that hangs like a limp picture over the mountains where I used to call home. And just beyond the rim of snow I used to see off beyond where the sky was still a little blue...

Yea. I know. You're still there. Out there somewhere - is you. I feel it. Sometimes.

Other times, I just pretend to. To make myself better. To make the ghosts sleep and the demons' dreams cease. Just to make the noises from the a/c and the freighters and the whirl of the information highway a little less in my head. I tell myself you're still there.

It used to be so simple. Back then. When they left me where the sand turns black. When I sat alone in an empty house, more than just that once. When I fell down on the stairs because I didn't want to walk. When I huddled against the window, just to watch if they had gone.

They didn't then. I remember. I thought they would. Part of me still hopes they do. But they don't. Never have. Not yet.

I didn't earn that. Didn't achieve anything to get that. Didn't count on it, either. I counted on remembering how coldness and darkness and loneliness feel. I counted on the shadows dancing on midnight walls of a room I didn't want to sleep in. I counted on the echos in a stairwell that shouldn't echo so well. I counted on disappointment. On loss. On emptiness.

Not on love.

You. Yeh - over there, across this room that feels like forever - you taught me how to do that. How to count on all the bad things. How to put trust in a little blue box - then throw it out at the ocean, watch it drown, and turn back round. Taught me that there wasn't much weight in little things. Taught me you were stronger - and weaker - than I would ever be. Taught me regret like I never knew before. Taught me anger -- how to hurt, break, fight. Taught me, above all, how to fear.

I've tried to undo it. Like those tiny little knots twisted in black floss - all around my wrists. Or fishing wire, but around my throat. Tried so long to remove it. Poison seeping like rainwater down deep into the soil. Tried to forget. But like the pictures I used to have, the ones I'd bet you still do - like the picture frames that used to hold them before I threw them all away, torn in two - it was impossible. Because just like that, they all painted pictures into memories - left their marks on even dead things.

And you better know I can't forget. Can't undo the things done to me. Can't remove the poison steeped into me.

I hope you know it. So you don't forget either. So you don't never remember what an empty glass looks like when it's hollowed out for breath. So you don't stop knowing what a little scarred heart looks like when you beat it with barbed wire and a stick.

I hope you never do it again. But more? I hope you don't forget. Because yea, okay, I earned it. But no one else does. No one else ever should. Not that.

-RK