I'm not browbeat about it, not really.

I may be oblivious, but thats willful. I know. I always know. I'm always right.

And that isn't a nod to my ego, because I wish for a second I could believe what a person says, versus what their eyes are telling me.

So, I am willingly oblivious. Willingly ignorant. Knowing, but not wanting to see.

But a persons intentions, their heart, their soul— it lurks like a wading creature behind the iris. I've seen fae, florals and fawn behind the eyes of a friend that is so genuine and loving. Seen an angel shackled to something blearing in the dark in the eyes of someone who smiles but it never reaches. Seen what I can imagine nirvana is in the eyes of a lover.

Some peoples eyes are so hollow, though, so empty, and that might be crueler then seeing a prowling beast waiting to lunge. Because at least that is hatred. That is passion. But nothingness? To be so completely indifferent? That is the complete absolution of a person's soul. Being selectively empathic, and horribly fake to bide your time.

So when this girl, with nothing behind her eyes leaves with fallacies on her tongue and little to nothing in regard to a person's very soul, no, I cannot act shocked. I cannot be saddened. I will rejoice, that the nothingness didn't take from my own myriad of vision.

My time has finally come to tell you that I no longer love you. I need to set you free. I can do so much better without you. This is so true, you ruined my dreams. You shattered my soul. I know because I allowed you. All because you're selfish and kept your life a secret for somebody else, so I'm walking away from it all today, a brand new person is here to stay this time. There will be nothing you can say because I really should have said Good-bye like yesterday. But once again I stayed praying, you would change, instead I just endured another one of your games. I'm no longer a player in your crazy masquerade. I will never look back again. Because the road I'm walking on never ends. Pain and heartache is all you've ever caused and too many times I allowed you to ruin me and I can no longer allow this to continue, this has to end today.

We walk away from the people who do us harm,

because to walk after them is to be the very definition of movement filled with vitriol.

What can be gained from such a brief pain, from someone angling to make themselves a part of your life when you can so easily cut them out? Get out.

Get out of me. Get out of my head, and get away from my life where you are unwelcome.

Pay your patronage to your other fuel,

light your fire there and warm your hands away from me.

Because I aim to give you fire no more. I hope that you will watch my burning body stoke no flames, give no white coal, and shudder with the tiniest wisp of air.

Let me lie cool on the ground, in ways that I know will dissatisfy you because I aim to be your fuel no more. You, who sit in a forest full of sticks, would choose to skin and flay me alive.

I hate what you've done to me. What you've tried to do to me.

To mold me in a way that my predecessors could not. So I gnash my teeth, clenching and grinding dust out of myself as I bear down to dig away. To burrow into the Earth until you can't follow me anyway.

Here, steadfast are my aching bleeding fingers, seeping into the Earth from where I was poured returned in a way I knew you couldn't gather me up. Slipping through fingers, like the oily fat that my body is now. Until I can reform into a new skin, and from the burrow deep within, I may rise through the Earth anew.

And when I look back, I know you are somewhere behind me, and I am somewhere beyond. For my eyes search the woods for your hollowed face, but it is nowhere near me. And I keep checking, looking back as I carefully carve my path, making sure to leave you no crumbs, no pebbles. For I am happy and content in my placement being nowhere you can know.

Goodbye to those so wicked, they'd burn me.

Goodnight to the aching sorrows so I know they will only reach me where you cannot.

We are not one giving unto each other, for I give unto myself. I give myself something new, like the breath of cold air in my fresh lungs. Sure, they ache from the form I formerly took. From the body I used to shake, but I have since shed the skin of yesterday's sorrow, to let my new form dry and bake in sun kissed mornings as I let my fingers caress dew sampled grass.

Here, I can close my eyes, and merely exist. I am free. Free from you, and yours. We aren't going to feel the familiar tear of our soul here. Here is the place where my breath breaths, and nature returns to me a place for another breath to inhale. I just want to know, was this what she always wanted, when she cried at the branch sampled window where branches swayed in shadows, acting like they were knocking, telling me of a place away from the day. Away from the days that felt like a movie I was living and walking through, a non-reality where voices of little things tried to entice me into vices and walk virtues in places that fingers and hands liked to tear and rip... and burn.

No, I am here. I am aching in the space where the voices do not exist. Where the sun dazzles my eyes, and wind wisps my hair. Skin kissed by cool breaths of nature's fair touch. Oh, I can feel the heat in me, and the cool undisturbed by the space of things that linger in the dark of the woods and I can turn. I can swing my body and sway, until I am under the sky and above the Earth, for everything that has come together to ache within me is my reprieve. I am alive. I am alive here, and here I will turn and turn until I can't anymore.

Until my body doesn't want to anymore. Because I want to.

And I know no one can reach me here.

No one.

I once loved the golden sun of summer.

The way I loved smelling flowers on spring mornings. Always reminded me of things never worth remembering. By the water, in the evenings when you held my hand in yours, you always let go with disappointment. That shit always resided in your heart that was filled with me. What if's of unkempt promises. Maybe that sun I once basked under, wasn't even gleaming with golden rays. I can't recall if loving the smell of flowers was my thing, where everything reminds me of you. Of us between random break-ups and forever kisses. My God! I loved the way your mouth kissed my blushing lips. Yours always held secrets, the ones hard to keep. Fights would seep through our bed sheets. They were always forgiving, where your scent remains, permanating. Those flowers under the gold sun, either on a spring morning or summer day, their beauty always reminded me of you.

You write it.

It sucks.

So you write it again.

Still sucks.

You wonder who you’re kidding—

calling it work, calling yourself a writer.

It feels like a joke.

A hobby playing dress-up.

But you’re still here.

The world didn’t ask.

It’s not waiting.

There’s no audience.

No prize.

Just that thing in your gut

that keeps hauling you back

like a bad habit you can’t shake.

That’s the hinge.

Not love.

Not talent.

Not some myth about "calling".

Just return.

Dragging your sorry ass back to the page.

That’s the hinge.

And the lever?

It’s your hand moving

when your head says don’t bother.

It’s typing through the static,

scraping at one dead paragraph

until it bleeds something half-honest.

Knowing no one’s watching.

Knowing it changes nothing.

But doing it clean.

You thought belief made you a writer.

But belief fades.

It always does.

What matters is

who shows up

when it’s gone.

That’s who writes the book.

-

Hemingway called his work shit. Celeste Ng rewrote whole books. David Foster Wallace drowned in doubt. Every writer you admire thought they weren’t good enough. Hell, they still think that.

They wrote anyway.

Often these days

the following genuine sentiment

Matthew Scott Harris

doth wish to share one son,

cuz twenty years after mother succumbed

courtesy of terminal illness

that ravaged her body.

I still reckon how yours truly

shrugged off proffering

tender loving care

within whose womb,

this sole prodigal son wannabe born,

thus shouldered with self scorn

and now two decades later,

the grief and regret not so heavily worn,

nevertheless I consider myself

less familiar to thy mama

than her hats (no surprise,

she got known

as the hat – trick - lady) on a rack

(built by papa)

that donned yorn head

and trumpeted the presence

of a free spirit.

He (the writer of these words) clearly recounts

as if her death occurred yesterday...,

(when all mine troubles

moost definitely not far away)

last remaining grains sands of time.

Imagine an hourglass

where fine granules

trickle from one to another

(upper to lower) bulbed chamber

just prior when coroner decrees death,

yet an opportunity prevailed

wherein said self (me) chose

NOT to stand vigil at deathbed

of she begat

an older and younger daughter

(mine sibling sisters).

Last breath(s) expelled while mama

tethered to machines,

one or more helped diminish

agonizing, depressing, and writhing

pain and discomfort

racked once fitness

and health conscious

industrious, tenacious, and vivacious body,

which malignant terminal illness

(no joke) riddled a former robust

Arthur Murray ballroom dance instructor

(think approximately

threescore and ten years past),

whose flirtatious demeanor

instantaneously caught fancy of handsome

twenty something papa at his prime.

Before rigor mortis quickly

stole precious lifeblood, and

final minutes ticked away until

countdown to... realm of absent consciousness

scant moments before subtle transition

slipped our beloved mother into deadzone...,

neither final adieu, caress, grief...,

nor poem written...

never communicated to deceased,

not an iota of sorrowful lament

bequeathed, prevailed, relinquished...

over lifeless body (mommy dearest)

relegated limp suddenly cold stone body,

where morgue aged (mortgaged) corpse

interestingly enough principally

kept in cold storage

(despite aversion to frigid air

exhibited by mama)

preparatory to cremation process.

Rather... suppressed resentment

exhibited itself at 1148 Greentree Lane

(partial listed then abode -

Matthew Scott Harris,

plus his family resided)

by mister recalcitrant,

felt ambivalent carte blanche blasé affection

regarding once young bride,

(who smothered cingular heir insync

with dada i.e. Boyce Brandon Harris),

cuz he (yours truly overstayed

livingsocial under same roof as parents,

which happenstance (in tandem

with the Leiper's preference

for their demesne plus

one hundred acre estate called Glen Elm

before being purchased by –

I believe a local

within Southeastern Montgomery County,

Pennsylvania realtor

named Donald Neilson, but do not quote me)

situated at 324 Level Road.

Both thee aforementioned

supposed biological guardians

railed, screamed, tormented (albeit verbally)

yours truly, upon mine eighteenth birthday,

when great expectations greatly exacerbating

emotionally hard times,

which ill suited poet de jure

experienced, brickbats rained

down upon these

(considerably mooch younger) lovely bones

whose anger (mine) smoldered

linkedin to constant epithets of expletives

out the mouths of those who begat me,

subsequently their livid with rage

tsunami festered within every

holy Mole (he) molecule

within mine atomized corporeal being

manifesting itself as deprivation

to embrace dear mama

attended at hospital with

both non twisted sisters;

one hailed from Woodbury, New Jersey

and the younger one staked out

modest home within Bend, Oregon,

meanwhile thee grim reaper

did patiently scythe before soon

nonchalantly heading back

to his old curiosity shop,

a rather bleak house, I now conclude.

Tenderness does not dissolve.

A decade ago I told you I would stay. I would wait. I would come if you called, and no one could ever replace you.

I've said those same words a dozen times by now. But I never meant it like I do now. Like I feel them.

A tugging ache in my chest; a tether or a string humming from the roots of my hair to the skin of my teeth.

I look too quickly to the side and I am flash banged by your smile.

I haven't seen it in years. But I know it, bone deep like a sun burn.

You told me a decade ago you didn't want me to waste my life waiting.

Oh, but how is it a waste when it's you?

When I was made to love you, and to be the very thing you hated, too?

No, tenderness does not dissolve. It consumes itself until it is a hundred times the size.

And I hold it, like I'll hold you should you ever come back.

Bloodied, beaten and bruised, I would use my last breath to ask to hold you.

For I haven't earned the right, but I should like to try.

Slick precision,

Ink rolls despite indecision.

Cross-marks, hash-marks,

slashes, dashes,

dead-ends abandoned,

in hopes that Providence

will deliver a satisfying string

of scribbled symbols:

signifying furious sounds,

harmonic mouth noise,

maybe even thoughts!

(If we’re lucky.)

Words flow,

But meaning?

God only knows.

Cosmic processes coalesce:

the gears of time,

the spheres of mass,

the birds, the bees,

the trees, and all things now

and hereafter.

But even this odd process

is given permission

amidst the galactic flurry.

Dark secretions stain the paper.

no consequence, no afterthought

that can be blotted out

except by violent scratching erasure.

A good pen is hard to find.

Harder still, a mad mind

to guide it.

The thing about never getting over anything in your life, is that eventually,

everything becomes a mass.

A mass of memories that hurt, that are nostalgic.

I can smell forty different perfumes, and they will each belong to someone different but belong to the same feeling.

Everyone I have loved and lost becomes an amalgamation with no specific person to tether my longing to.

And I am empty and chasing something that I miss but I can't remember..

I pick up the fork in the

sink full of sand.

The beached whale screaming for land.

I put the cake batter in

the mixing bowl

as I ladle the 8:20 bus to the city and leave it to soak. The waters carry the pieces of me away, left to drown. I'm wide awake, ready to sleep on the plywood beneath me. The moon tides and the silent walks home. I knaw on my strings to my sweatshirt. I go away. Let go of it all. Mixing the sand between my fork and my heart.