Edge of Lightning

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 It’s mid summer now

The air has changed into a thick blanket

Warm

Humid

Wrapping me like a small child in desperate need of reassurance 

I feel coddled by the song of cicadas and the distance bark of dogs

The sounds of the train rumbling in the distance that beats the tracks like my heart in my chest

It brings along with it the dull ache in my chest

Echoes not of just one

But many come and gone

I see you in the distant flashes of the heat lightning that strikes on the horizon 

Silent

Bold

And so captivating I want to reach out and grab hold of it

Intertwining my fingers with the tendrils of clouds I can barely make out each time the light flashes out

Deeply desiring to feel the same strike in my own heart again

I feel it starting to itch again

That deep sense of longing

Of needing

Something to make my still heart beat

Something to make my sluggish mind race

I miss the comfort

The deep feeling of being loved for more than the sum of parts that I am so quickly thrown together out of

I miss you

I miss you sometimes to the point I feel each vein in my body twitch and my lungs swell like I’m drowning on just the air that fills them

How bitter the taste of misplaced nostalgia 

How cruel the heat that lingers the air

Even hours after the summer has disappeared over the edge of the known sky

I don’t really miss you though

I fantasize about a person that never really existed

A version of myself that I made by cutting away at my own flesh until I was able to fit in the thin gap of the door you left just cracked to try to work my way into your heart

The trail of blood leading to the absent welcome mat being the give away to my own poorly made decision to try to place a weed into your own mental garden

One that you were so meticulous to cultivate that only a few things might be able to break through the tough soil

It reminds me of the dry summer clay 

The one that stained my feet as a child 

The copper color my mother would scold me for as she tried to scrub it out from underneath my unkempt nails 

The same clay that I’d scrap from beneath my own nails with my dime store pocket knife as I got older

Cursing myself for ever digging into it 

Just like your heart

So tough and unforgiving 

My name 

In Greek, means “life”. 

How ironic

To be named after the very thing that I find myself cursing day in and day out

To be named after the thing I fail so miserably to bring to my own existence that I try to bring it to the hearts of those around me, even though I am again and again, unsuccessful 

I look

Out again

To the crackling of the warm summer sky, the stars that twinkle but all but gone

Merely shadows of the way it once was

How cruel the coming of the southern summer

The same thing over and over again year by year

Yet it always finds a different version of me,

Usually not for the better.

Comments

  1. JOSHUA PATRICK MAGEZIJuly 17, 2025 at 4:17 AM

    i love the way you write your poems. is it the different kind of taste you have from mine? the other thing, teach how i can make my poems visible on google just like yours are. i would be the happiest if you read some of my poems on joshuamagezi.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete

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