I want to laugh most of the time

A poem

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I wish I could be as I was last week

Annoyingly energetic and full of conversation

Returning to a space of permanent solemn 

Voices echoing through the room like spears instead of wind

Part of me is glad you stuck around because you’re smiling

Even when I leave, I’m sure you’re beaming

You don’t have to compliment me out of pity

Or draw out conversation because I’m outside the circle

You can sit in my chair, let clothes fall on the floor

I wasn’t going to hang them anytime soon, anyways 

We can exchange small smiles when I come and go 

if I am in your line of direct vision otherwise you shouldn’t acknowledge me

unless sometime you want to

In the hall laughter spilling from the doorframe, sitting in front of your door

Applesauce tee shirt and shorts and clogs I slipped on, in smeared stolen eyeliner

Glance at the door every so often but look away when you open it

in case you decide to go to sleep

We don’t ever have to talk about it, and we can be strangers in the summer

Acquaintances in the fall, and fade out by the cherry blossoms 

I won’t whisper and I don’t need a code name 

I haven’t learned your laugh but I don’t think you’re laughing anymore

I hope you are smiling, though it isn’t any of my business 

Subconsciously you are smiling and subconsciously we are laughing and unconsciously we laid together for a night or two and noticed things deemed insignificant 

With the promise that those very things held as much as importance as the sun and the sky

I’m still waiting front of your door, the notes are here after a while, a couple tearing

I hear you coming and I look at you and smile, you smile back

I am terrified by your commiseration

I look back down to let you open the door, you do

You hand your weight to the frame, ask if I’m working, I reply no, just writing, you nod

I tell you to have a good night like an idiot and I feel blood in my fingernails

You say you too, you laugh, you’re gone

I don’t go to sleep quite yet, I’ll wait in front of your door a while more

I’m not waiting for you, maybe just a little, no presupposition of you coming around, don’t come around

Step over my red clogs, brush your teeth, back to bed

Oblivious to the way you’re clawing at my brain, you miss the gash growing deeper into my head

I gush bloody brain cells onto the carpet between the bathroom and your door

Let blood stain the ground in hopes red is your favorite color

People are neutral to the red carpet, but it's too bright and the gash is growing and the red is seeping

They want something calmer, blue

I try to bleed blue

I try to absorb energy from a hopelessly setting sun just so I can stay in the room with you

I pray you’ll come back around, or we’ll brush our teeth in the same bathroom

I’ll stay awake in criss cross

applesauce in front of your door

Bearing uncanny resemblance to a foolish version of my past self

come around next week

-B

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