Self Tragedy ✔ [poetry]

ashes in the water

i. I cried the first time around.

I cried when I had to do it the second time.

I wanted to cry when I thought about doing it the third time. But I didn't cry when I finally closed my eyes and did the deeds.

The fourth time, the fifth time, the sixth time—

I stopped crying a long time ago.

I stop feeling guilty every time I light a match, stop feeling sad for burning down another bridge, amongst many others.

Soon, it didn't really matter anymore.

Things tend to blur together when you don't want to remember about them.

Let's forget to forget.

Remember the past, no more.

ii. There's something sterile about the procedure. Muscle memory.

Burn up all the bridges every four year, leave nothing behind.

Every summer before I turn a new page in my life, I rip the current one to shreds.

A last hurrah, a coming-out party—something along the line, I don't really know.

Anything for a few days of rushed adrenaline and cathartic releases, I suppose. Anything to show the cards I've held close to my chest just to rub it in how little do people really know about me.

Humans are creatures of habits. Not a hard thing to do when you acknowledge long ago your life is a predictable pattern, a cycle of rinse and repeat over and over again: Tear everything down to its hull for all that is worth it. Everything I built and nurtured and constructed—down they go.

Same faults, same consequences, same kinds of troubles.

Fallouts and accusations—you know I love this kind of thrill—last time and the time before this and the time before that. A hilarious sport that I compete with myself at my own expense.

When the match drops, the diesel will burn. The flame will devour everything in front of me, and I'll watch it until the last second—watch a kingdom, a legacy, reduced into nothing by itself.

Maybe this time, I'll stay back long enough to let smoke in my eyes and trick myself into thinking I'm mourning a good riddance.

Goodbye, my friends.

I'll miss you.

iii. There will be blisters on your fingers, black flecks crammed under your cuticles. You have to cut them, file them, rub salves on the burn marks until there's nothing there anymore. And then you drive away. You don't bring any baggage, any trinkets. Keep driving on this straight, one way road and don't look back. Drive until the tank runs out and the engines stopped running, drive until you don't see the silhouettes of five burning bridges and three flaming houses behind you no more. Drive until all you can see is the ocean yearning in front of you and you can see the distant land stretches across the horizon. Drive until you can exhale again and feel that glimmer of hope, of renewal, of finality beyond your windshield.

That hope wouldn't burn—not the same way the excitement and the anger did. You wouldn't notice it lingering at the back of your throat—bitter and prickly and hard to swallow, or sting the corners of your eyes or tingle your fingertips. Hope is a slow, fragile thing. You wouldn't notice it at all, not even after it fades away. Because it doesn't matter—who would notice such small, insignificant details when you crave bigger, brighter motions?

You're at the beginning of the end all over again. Building everything up from scraps. Building bridges and houses, sorting through the new memories and stowing them away with the same carelessness I did with the old ones that were lost in the fire.

It's another chapter that I already knew the ending to. But that's the appeal—I'm the only one that knows the ending, nobody else does.

vi. Most of the time, I don't see the small cracks until the whole structure collapses.

Most of the time, when I see the cracks I start punching at it until there is a hole there instead.

Most of the time, burning is easier.

But I think about the alternatives a lot:

What if I just turn around, walk away? I can leave things as it is, slip into the night and begone as though I was never really there in the first place. I could bring some trinkets along. Bring the memories—detached, cursory memories that I think will make my heart warm if I keep them close to my chest long enough. Bottle up the laughter, the happiness, and put them at the bottom of my trunk.

It would be very nice, yeah? I like the sound of it.

vii. Eventually, that feeling will come creeping up my spine.

It's silent, but I know it's there when it's there. It'll lay next to me, squeezing my shoulders gently, breathing down my nape.

It's time.

viii. One morning, you would open your eyes and look at the new bridges and the houses you have surrounded yourself with, the people and the smiles, and you realize everything you thought is real is not. The space you had carved out for yourself isn't yours. The people who you love only love me back for the pompous pieces of you that fit their vision.

But you wouldn't believe it. You wouldn't and you wouldn't and you never would until the very, very end. Because when crashes and burns are a distant dream you haven't revisited in months and years, when you've fallen asleep to the lull of the presence, hope is a distinct stab at the back of your brain that you can't ignore, can't not believe in. It's a beautiful, fragile thing, and you have never been able to keep beautiful, fragile things alive for very long before.

So.

You stay and pray this time will last. You aren't going to run, you are going to stay and you're going to make it work.

It won't, but you want to be hopeful, anyway.

You still don't cry when you strike a match.

ix. Sometimes you have to burn everything to the ground because that's the only way you can forget.

Sometimes you have to hide the secrets under the floor because that's the only way you can remain. You may succeed, you may not. You often don't, because you don't let people into your house, but you tell them enough about it they vaguely know all about the holes in the walls and the floorboards.

That's the problem here, isn't it? You still can't learn how to keep your mouth shut. You won't learn.

Perhaps once you learn that, you won't be stuck in this sickening cycle anymore.

Until then, you will keep the matchbox in your right pocket and your car key in your left—ready to bolt.

Sometimes, you think lighting yourself on fire is the only true way out.

x. You will know when it's time to look at the home you've built crumbling. You will know when you have to take out your matches, have to walk across the bridge, have to leave everything behind once again.

It's hard to burn everything down by your own hands after the time you've built it up.

But it's harder to watch if you aren't the one that poured gasoline on all the precious memories that were still there, watching helplessly as the other person across the bridge did.

Don't be the one that is stranded and trapped in a fire. Don't be the one that is buried under tonnes of cement,

It isn't pretty, but you have to do it.

Light up the bridge,

And run.