Windmill

Numb. What would it take to feel numb? To not spend my life focusing on the paintings trapped deep inside my heart. With the very core of my being muttering like a drugie that he doesn’t need the memories, that he can rid himself of care and concern and all the thoughts that ricochet across the inside of my brain.

I reach out. I grab my British Racing Green Squire Stratocaster. It’s not expensive, but it’s got a nice sound, and a good feel. I plug it in. I grab a pick. I start to play. My arm spins in a windmill trying to shake these thoughts out of my mind, striking against metallic cords with every rotation. Centrifugal force pulling and pulling to no avail. Fingertips growing calluses my heart begs it could someday have. All human terms of meter and rhyme sink behind the terrifying question of how to remove a low E-string from my heart before it contracts splitting the pumping organ in half. Six strings and five fingers cant purge me of this image.

Projecting thoughts that sound like fantasies, they bounce off the wall and into my eyes, into my brain. Like Alex Delarge, strapped to a chair, eyes pried open. Saline dripped in, stopped from blinking. Forced to witness the same images again and again. Images of pain and beauty bound together. Blended so perfectly I can’t even tell where one begins and the other ends. Every instance. Every frame. Every nanosecond pounding against my chest, tearing me inside out.

Every frame drives me further and further from sleep. I desperately gather up my pile of restless nights and stuff them into notebooks, word documents, songs and blogs. Try to hide them. Try to forget. All to no avail, there is no bottom. More and more ideas surface the deeper I dig. Buried alive. Nothing is forgotten but me.

Why must the universe be left alone? Why do we always settle for peace when we can have something so much better than accepting the bed we lie in. That pins and needles will be poking and prodding at us for all eternity. Nothing changes until we announce that Lazerus has come back from the dead, that he never died in the first place. That he was alive and well this whole time, deciding to sleep in, sipping on tea from the comfort of his own bed. Finally leaving the comfort of a tomb just to remind us what he looks like.

Part of me only wants to ignore the smoke alarm. As if concentration and positive thought will extinguish a fire. Deny it’s existence and it still burns. Time won’t heal it, only let it spread. Overtaking everything. Leaving nothing behind but ash and rubble. The fire must be addressed. Either it will be put out or fed, letting it take over.

Will winter ever thaw? I know it did last year. But this year is different. So just speak to me. Tell me that ice melts and I know it will. Tell me that leaves, and grass, and birds will return and I know they will. Tell me this frost is not forever. Remind me spring is coming. Tell me what the sun looks like and I’ll believe you.