3

3

That whole rickety, vacant, unkempt thing is the definition of neglect. Dust on the floors. Dust on the meaningless shit on the shelves.  Dust on the expectations I had for any kind of love that I hung out to dry a year ago in the garage.

Magnetic fields emanate from its walls, trapping whatever enters with the confusion of not being enough. The facade of occasional validation seeps in through the cracks of it all and makes a disgusting soup on the floor.  

I know it’s happening. And somehow it just continues, continues, and keeps continuing.

The bare white walls, the house empty, but full of rejection. Never feeling remotely like a home, but oddly enough continually garnering so much of my time.

Every day is a new kind of disappointment.

Displacement. Repetition.

Some days, the dirty white blinds play tricks on me and let in a few beautiful dusty beams of light. Even then, it still feels old and broken and stifled.  The room where it comes in is always too hot or too cold. It’s damp. The blankets are always on the damn floor.

The lawn is too long. 

The clothes pile is unattended. 

Then suddenly – the lawn is shorn clean, and four loads are done, warm and comfortable.

I try to make it steady. It’s never enough.

Everything in the house is neglected and half cared for. 

A disrepaired ring, never touched, months forgotten.

Each time I get ready to leave, the foundation gives and more things seep in through the cracks – hope, love, excitement, temporary lies –  sweetly sticking my feet to the floor of the place that I’ve sworn off my whole life, the place that I know deep down is still just as miserable as I gave it credit for.

Looking at my packed bag, the stuff creeps up to my ankles.

I don't know where I’m supposed to take it – so why go?

Try to make it enough. 

Belong. 

Forget about the ring.

One day, I crane my neck into the light. I can see that the light shines on everything and everybody, while the house lurks in the dark of the objects that the sun shows its light to on its way down to earth. 

I glance out the front door from the shade and something pushes me out into the day. It lunges for one last thing. But in the knick of time, I snatch up my rusted, tattered, neglected expectations, and sprint down the road with them in my hand trailing out behind me, the dust and dirt flying off the further away I manage to get with each step.  

The shining rain is pouring down and making them new again, so I can tie them around my neck and wear them wherever I’m running.

3.5 

The ring in the mail.

Pseudo-sentimentality.

Never to be worn again, but not thrown away, either.

The email. The damn email. 

Familiar. 

Infuriating.

Opened. Fingers hover… no. 

Closed. 

Lightly doused in metaphorical gasoline and politely burned as I bask in the cool, crisp future, the flames warming my hands for a short while, then finally going out forever.

4.