Meant To Be Lonely

She puts on a smile for the rest of the world,

Greets all she meets with “Hello.”

She wears this mask from eight to five everyday

And no one even knows.

They all see what’s on the outside,

Like she’s got the world in her hands,

But they don’t even know…

When she goes home her smile fades away,

And tears fall more often than not.

So she asks God every day

Why her life has turned out this way.

She’s finally come to believe…

Some people are meant to be lonely.

Some people are meant to be alone.

Some people are meant to be lonely.

Some people are meant to grow old alone.

She punches the clock and walks out the door,

Her heels click across the floor.

All their heads turn and wonder just who

The lucky man is waiting at home.

And no one even knows

The truth is there’s nobody there

And a single tear falls into her single glass of Champaign.

Before she crawls into bed, she gets on her knees

And she prays to Him every night,

“God, oh please, send him my way,

Because I can’t live this kind of life.”

Some people are meant to be lonely.

Some people are meant to be alone.

Some people are meant to be lonely.

Some people are meant to grow old alone.

It’s a sad prospect indeed

Because we’d all like to believe

There’s someone for everyone out there

And someday we’ll find the one who completes us.

But she knows the bitter truth.

Some people will always be lonely,

Some people will always be alone.

She knows she was meant to be lonely,

She knows she’ll grow old alone.

Tonight, she gets off her knees.

She won’t pray anymore.

The chair slips from under her feet.

And she is no more.

Realization

"So how has work been going?" he asked, casually. The beginning of a conversation caught me off-guard, but I proceeded nonetheless.
"It's going well enough, I suppose. I really like working with the kids, but I could use more hours," I said, just as casually back.
"I always knew you'd be great with kids," he remarked. "You'll be a great teacher."

And with a simple conversation—a casual exchange of words, syllables, sounds—he ripped my heart in two. The casualness of our interaction, like we were old school mates reminiscing about the sandbox or simple church-goers making small talk after service, completely undermined our past and my feelings for him. I wanted to scream, to shake him, hit him until he realized what he’d done, to let the whole world know he had broken my heart. Instead, I smiled my casual smile and made a casual joke. I acted indifferent to his sappy one-month anniversary with his new girlfriend. I acted like he acted—like nothing had happened. Outside, I was casual, cool, collected. Inside, tormented, twisted, torn. I kept trying to end our flippant discourse, the rhetoric trying to convince me everything was fine when it really wasn’t. But he kept talking. Kept tormenting me. Kept hurting me.

            And I let him.

            Because the elation I felt while I could stand and look into his eyes, see his face, hear his voice, made the pain nearly worth it. For a moment, I could pretend that nothing did happen, or that everything had happened. Everything that I had ever wanted. That maybe we still had a chance. That you hadn’t torn me to pieces.

            But we both knew better than that. The unspoken, unmentioned uneasiness lingered between us, as solid and real as the front of the Durango that physically separated us now. The only real thing that kept me from tearing you apart, piece by piece. Or from loving you, touch by touch.

            I looked down. I fumbled with my keys. My casualness was wearing thin as my feelings came rushing back. Feelings I first had a year ago, exactly. I took one last look at him, I smiled. I laughed. I said goodbye. I felt outside myself. The car door opened. In right foot, in left. The door shut.

            Instantly, the tears came. The engine started, and left that place of torment as quickly as possible, as if vacating the area where this all took place would alleviate the pain. I tried to run, but I can’t run from my heart. I cried the whole drive home.

            He broke my heart and he didn’t even know it.

Wholly Broken

Have you ever felt your life in a thousand different ways pulled?

Like you can have my heart, and you? You can have my soul.

I’ve just been stretched so thin I don’t know if I’ll ever be whole again.

I gave you my sight

Because of the beautiful things you had.

I gave you my hearing

Because of the wondering songs you sang.

You took my gentle touch

When you were gentle no more

And you took my virtue

When you said I was a whore.

Now I’m patiently waiting—crumbled, broken, and tossed—

For the you I haven’t met yet, to gather all the things I’ve lost.

Bring back my sight so I can see you,

My ears so I can hear you,

My touch so I can feel you.

And maybe then, whole again,

I think that only then,

With all those things restored,

Will my heart and soul rejoice and

Love can be reborn.

I'm Fine

My life passes me by and I don’t even realize this dream I’ve dreamt is actually my real life. All these strangers are familiar faces. They ask me what’s wrong but I can’t relate to them. They think they know the real me, but none of them know my demons. They eat the inside of me and the irony is that I need them, because as much as they tear me apart, demolish me, consume my soul, they’re the only ones that have seen me bare and whole. They know the secrets of my heart—my desires. The things I cannot tell you or anyone. They’re the reason I feel pain, hurt, anger, and, the most powerful of all, love. Something you know nothing of. You know you’re the reason I’ve locked my soul up inside myself, like a vault, twelve clicks passed the twenty of a combination lost. So deep inside myself, it’ll never be unlocked. And even though you and me, we could never be, I’ve still got my demons to rely on, to fuel me. So you go on and live your life just like you never knew me, held me, took me. I’ll be fine. I’ll be broken, but that’s all right. I’m strong and I’ll move on from this pain and maybe some fucking day I can begin to live my life.

Fade

What is tired, what is sleep?

The present fades into yesterday.

I don’t remember what I did today and like a dream it slowly comes and fades.

The people are never who I think they are, and scream my name like they want to know my heart.

But I walk through this purple haze,

Caught in the world of yesterdays,

Where I slowly decay and patiently wait,

For my life to start

As I fade away.

Frozen Heart

She once believed in love. She always wanted one of those stories—the ones about love at first sight or an accidental bump-in at the grocery store, right in the aisle between loneliness and love, surrounded by the frozen foods witnessing the immediate thawing of two frozen hearts. So much so that she found herself running into potential husbands in the market or always telling herself that he was “the one” before they even exchanged phone numbers. These strangers were polite enough, often apologizing and scuttling off to what she believed were their love-filled lives. They didn’t need to thaw their hearts because they were already ablaze with passion and desire. So she would slink back to aisle loneliness, where her frozen heart had nothing to offer them. She knew it was silly, but the fairy-tale believing part of her wanted so badly to believe it all: love at first sight, prince charming, and a thawed-out frozen foods section.

            After years, that part of her was nearly dead now, and her heart stone cold. She no longer believed in happy endings, and scoffed at those who said it was love at first sight, those who proclaimed they knew he was “the one.” Liars, she thought, there’s really no such thing. She figured they were all like she was, telling themselves this fair tale any time they had a new lover, on the off-chance they could actually put up with one another long enough to think they were in love and get hitched. Then they had their story. They lived on the blindness of desire and societal pressure—this is how it’s supposed to go. College Job Boyfriend Marriage. The order or necessity of all seemed irrelevant. Afraid of being alone, they had settled, and they now tell all their friends the lie about how it was love at first sight, when that’s what they had told themselves hundreds of times. In truth, they were miserable, wondering if they really were in love. If love was even real.

            She knew. She no longer wanted the fairy tale. No longer wanted love because she had learned long ago that love did not exist.           

            She wanted real life.

            And to be completely real, she stopped believing in love.

From Him

From him:

I watched the tide roll in

And it felt like a sin.

I should have been home with you,

But, see, I wasn’t sure what to do.

You’ve made yourself quite clear,

You said you didn’t want me near,

So when she came strolling by

I couldn’t help but say hi.

She was young, she was fun,

And her soft red lips,

I only wished that I could kiss…

But then there was you,

And our little girl.

Our home. Our room.

Our life.

I didn’t want to have to apologize

Yet I couldn’t tell her goodbye.

I never knew where to draw the line,

Don’t I deserve a happy life?

Hazel Rims

I felt myself leave, and suddenly I was floating in the corner of the room, spying on a girl who looked and sounded like me, but wasn’t me. She had an unmistakable cool about her, slipping on a pair of aviator sunglasses and laying on the bed next to him.

            He propped himself up on his elbow, and his peppered gray hair fell across his brow. He couldn’t have been more than 26. The color of his hair reminded me of a rabbit I once had, called Pepper. It was grey, but not the grey of an old man. More the grey of a mysterious stranger, clouded in dimmed lighting of the club and now in the dim lighting of his hotel room.

            The girl that was me and was not me touched his lips with the tip of her finger. Surprisingly, I could feel them. They were soft, and I wondered if he would kiss me. The girl that was me and was not me looked into his eyes. The pupils were large round orbs, barely making his dark hazel irises visible. Hazel rims surrounding deep, black holes in the universe.

            He pulled the girl that was me and was not me closer, and touched her chin with his fingers and met her lips in the space between them. His lips were sweet, and he enveloped my soul—our soul, the girl that was me and was not me—in that kiss. I knew then that I had been missing this before, this charismatic explosion of lust and passion and love that should accompany a first kiss, and had circumstances been different we could have been soul mates.

            He pulled away, looked at the girl that was me and was not me, and stated quite frankly in his Canadian Irish accent, “Wow. That was awesome. I mean, if that hadn’t been good that would have really sucked. But no, no…that was awesome.”

            I liked the way he said “awesome,” elongating the “a” sound into a long vowel so it sounded like aaawesome, like when the doctor makes you say “Aaaaw” when he’s checking your tonsils, only in a sexier voice that I had never heard before. I laughed and we kissed again, with the same desire as before, and again I thought I had been missing this feeling that should accompany a second kiss, and had circumstances been different we could have been soul mates.

            We would lay there, the three of us: him, me, and the girl that was me and was not me. Our bare bodies touched, and he would talk to me about people I didn’t know as if I did, and I sometimes wondered if he really knew who I was. Regardless, we talked, then we kissed again, each time the little explosion of could-have-been love escaping his lips and charging mine. We would talk more, he would move my hand to touch him, and knowing his drunkenness prevented any type of an erection, I would move it back behind his head and kiss him more. That seemed to satisfy him.

            I looked over his body. He must have once had an amazing body, but time and age had definitely done its part. His left shoulder was covered in a finished tattoo, and the right was the canvas for a work in progress, one that would eventually look like its counterpart on the left. I traced the lines of the unfinished masterpiece with my finger, and he watched me do so.

            He then grabbed my hips, my bare, white hips, and flipped me onto my stomach. I giggled as he did so, touching my sensitive spots that rarely get such attention. He sat on my back and began to massage my shoulders, moving down my back and rubbing his well-worked palms over my body.

            “Gawd. You’re such a skinny bitch!” he proclaimed, and slapped my left cheek playfully. I snorted at the ridiculousness of such a statement. The girl he was touching, the girl who was me and was not me, was far from being what anyone would consider a skinny bitch. Not because she was fat, but she was hefty, and not because she had never been a bitch, but because she usually was not. Regardless, it was the last thing I expected him to call the girl that was me and was not me. He may have said it sarcastically, may have said it to get his piece of ass. He may have meant it. The girl that was me and was not me really did not care.

            He laid down on top of the girl that was me and was not me, and I half watched from the corner of the room and half felt him on the bed as he breathed lightly into my ear. He rolled over onto his back onto the bed, and I laid my head on his chest. He stared at the ceiling.

            “Do you ever look at the ceiling and see the little lines start to move?” he asked, seriously. I propped my head on my hand and laughed.

            “No,” I said. “But then again, I’m not on any drugs.”

            “What? Neither am I.” A pause. “Okay, maybe I am.”

            “Ecstasy?”

            “How did ya know that?” He was baffled. But from the moment I saw his pupils that were discs inside his irises, I had a feeling.

            “Your eyes. They’re dilated.”

            “Oh.” A pause. “Do you want some then?” Again, I laughed. The girl who was me and who was not me had only smoked a bit of weed in her life, and mostly stuck to alcohol and never had taken any other drugs. The only reason she knew anything about ecstasy was from what she had been told by her college roommate: you can usually tell if someone is on X if their eyes are dilated and they love touching and being touched. He seemed to fit the description quite well..

            “No thank you. I’m drunk,” I replied, assuming this would be good enough reason not to. He seemed to think so, and didn’t ask again. I moved to get up, and he pulled me back.

            “Where are you going?” he seemed concerned.

            “I’m just going to the bathroom,” I lied. In all reality, I had floated back down from my corner and reentered my body. I was whole again and the girl who was so cool and collected was gone, and I had really got up to redress and leave the room. Leave the hotel. Like a hooker after she was done earning her pay. I felt dirty. Used. But somewhat elated at the experience I had just had with such an attractive, foreign man.

            I switched on the light in the bathroom and looked at my naked body. I touched my breasts, my stomach, my love handles. Skinny bitch, ha. How ridiculous. How funny. How much I wished that I really were. I sighed heavily and went back to the bed. I was now fully myself, and switched off the lights. I checked the clock. 3 a.m. I needed to be up in three hours for the conference. The reason I was in Canada in the first place. Or maybe the reason I was here was for this. To meet my could-have-been-soul-mate and have fireworks pass between our lips the first, second, third, fourth, and every time we kissed. Maybe that’s why I went. To experience what it should be like to love and be loved, by my could-have-been soul mate, as the girl who was and who was not me.

Jeremiah

I think my heart beats to the rhythm of your soul. This occurred to me on a brisk autumn day. The sun still shone but the chill of winter was approaching. The rays warmed my skin through my white cotton blouse, yet the breeze sent a bone-chilling frost to the tips of my fingers. I pressed my hand to my chest to warm it—and that’s when I felt it. A rhythm so distinct yet so unfamiliar it could not belong to me. The steady beat reminded me of a bass drum, deep and full of warmth. I listened to it for a minute—a minute that could have lasted a lifetime—and instinctively it came to me: This is Jeremiah. If ever there was a sound that could encompass all you are to me, this was it. My hand was warm now but I left it lingering on my breast. The sound, the beat, the feeling—it all reminded me of you. Then I finally came to a realization. The rhythm was not just you but you within my heart. It was us. My heart and your soul in a rhythmic dance, mingling and swaying and stepping together. Not two separate entities, but one cohesive entanglement of heart and soul, bound together by love.