Lost Lingering Leaves

Dark, dim, and displaced,
these days display 
an ever so daunting sky.

And a dry defining death
lines the clouds...
Where this haunting lies.

After living down south for almost four years, then making a brief trip to live Italy for a month... this whole idea of moving back home has been nothing short of a struggle for me.

Like I've said before in past posts, I've seen many different parts of the country, and I guess you can now also say the world. Although traveling and experiencing life in different places is wonderful and I recommend it for everyone, know that it also makes everything much more difficult in the end. Once you leave the place you've always called home, when you return, you begin to have these unrealistic expectations for the location in which you grew up in. 

For example, over the past couple months, I've been searching for Florentine sunsets in the skies towards Buffalo, making my way towards the boardwalk in Charlotte to see if Lake Ontario has made love with Miss Atlantic yet, and I've been lying to myself lately, pretending the music of Corey Smith and Zack Brown Band still sounds the same in a cluttered Rochester Garage. At night, I now walk the streets of this familiar neighborhood making believe the echos of antique accordions allow my legs to move and the vibrations of tongues from romantic languages race my heart. Not to mention, I slowly step these sidewalks right out in the opened as if I couldn't get a ticket for straight sippin' out of cheap bottles of Merlot. Every night, I make my way to local bars looking for an 8-ball game, and a friend who once was willing to shoot a bit after a long night at the library. Also, I've hit bulls-eyes here, but it just doesn't feel the same. It's just not the same anymore. 

For a while things felt the same, but I think that's just because the summer season in Rochester is as beautiful as anywhere else. It wasn't until a couple weeks ago when this darkness began to settle in my chest; a feeling I cannot quite define. To call it depression is much to simple. But to claim it to be just a feeling of missing the past would be far to complicated... plus, that's why we experience things, to remember them, to miss them, isn't it? If you don't miss something when it's over, what was ever the point for doing it in the first place? 

But as I was saying, this all didn't start until about two weeks ago, you know, when we started to feel the seasons changing, watching this before our eyes. Although the leaves still green, refusing to get painted in wonderful oranges and yellows, the universe is adding weight to the air, and I can feel us falling. I can hear Fall flying in the wind, waiting to land it's body all over this town. I have realized the days here are becoming shorter, but so is my happiness. I've admitted it many times before, I enjoy the night far more than the day, but when there's a presence of a different darkness, the moon and stars just do not look the same, it's as if they repetitively lose the war against the clouds. I don't understand why the weather, or where we are, must affect how we act towards each other on a day to day basis? I'm not pointing any fingers, because I too am victimized by Mother Nature, and I simply cannot stand losing the fight to her every single time she decides to change.

In a fast paced town constantly on the go, when the brisk Winter begins to creep in, the people here also start to change. I got out of work early the other day, and while staring through the thickness of separated raindrops, I found myself fixated on a tree across the street in the woods. I sat motionless staring, as if all the clocks in the world just stopped, and I had this epiphany... I came to the sad conclusion that anyone who grew up around here are similar to the leaves of this lonely tree in the woods, especially when it comes to the changing of seasons. We spend our summer days smiling in the grazes of sunshine, but once that air begins to change, our limbs, our eyes, and our lips, they all begin to crinkle at the edges, and the colors of our hearts begin to slightly change. We endure this morphing act like there is no other option. We fall far from the branches of our souls to a ground iced over in wintry fingertips, and from there, we barely touch each other. Covered in snow, we search through slush for a Spring that never comes in time. So, consumed by a brisk darkness, we coast through our days in silence. It's almost comical how we can feel so alone during this time, even when there's so many other people around us.

Lately, between the thoughts about the death of a friend, the death of a friends father, and this creeping coldness, I have subjected myself to the changing of leaves with no escape. The rest of the leaves tell me I'm much too early, but I'm already laying on the ground looking up, wondering where everything went so wrong. What happened to the way sounds of crashing waves helped me fall asleep? Where did that love go I saw in Venice between that old couple holding hands on the bench? Why did moving forward have to make me leave those friends behind? Where is my sanity hiding? What does it even mean to go insane? Is this darkness? Is this depression? Is this missing the past?... or am I just doing what I always did, and changing with the leaves?

I think love has a big part in all of this. I think the lack of love has finally taken its toll on my heart. This heavy air, it collapses my chest so perfectly; so beautifully diminishing to my lungs it now lives. With my eyes widened in the awakening of morning, I cannot breathe, and in the hours when my eyelids should be closed, I barely sleep. To call this anxiety over nothing is just a cop-out. To claim this to be some mental breakdown is far from correct, but I guess I can see why you may think this. But the truth is, there is no true way of classifying this mood I am in, or if it is even considered a mood for that matter. 

What it comes down to though, is the fact that I have been weak enough to let this feeling consume me. My motivation has gone A-wall (I think it has left our Earth), my heart now hangs from icicles (But Winter has yet to arrive), my mind is stuck masking itself in stability (A baggy costume I wear so sloppily), my emotions trapped beneath my feet ( I step on them as I run in circles, but do not feel a thing), and my eyes, these brightly bloodshot things, they look like they have punctured my face (It hurts deeply to see ahead, while always looking back). 

With all the beauty I have already seen, and every wonder I still wish to one day watch touch my legs, I am lost here, in a place I know from corner to corner, edge to edge. I want to jump off, or at least wake up. To most, this eagerness may appear as the cowardliness of suicidal knees, but to some, the people who think like I do, merely understand this concept. All I am saying, is I wish I had the strength within my shins to spring my body from this state of mind, from this lost lingering darkness.

I now am torn between the past lives I have led, and the many new lives I only long to lead one day. But stuck here, in this place I know much too well, I once believed it was time to leave it again, but now, after feeling this feeling I have felt before, everything feels the same, yet completely different... and I now have come to conclusion that I'm meant to stay here for a while, to eventually leave, or permanently stay. That is the ironic beauty in it though, no matter what tonight touches us with, tomorrow may have different fingertips.

I stare up at those other leaves as they scream down to me. I am early; this I understand. But down here, against the blades of grass that have cut me still , I'm waiting for a sign, a spark in the sky that says I can stand again. I guess what I'm doing is changing, like the leaves of before, the colors of tomorrow, and the crinkles that may never sound when we step on them. I'm down here waiting, ready to let the sun beam down and warm my soul again, even though my bones will break so thoughtfully in this brisk darkness that lies ahead.

Dammed, distraught, and unclothed,
I lie naked in giant piles 
that just may never come.

Destroyed by darkness,
and living in a longing...
There will be a light 

when this is done.