#nickanello

[studiomilkbox]

oppositever

You can't be anything but wrong

if the past will always be held against you.

Leaning right against it won't get me anywhere

(like, if you never learned to live it right,

you'll never learn to let it go).

When you're gone, you're only good for an "ever"

(like I was led to believe you all along),

like I never mattered

(like, forever isn't the opposite of never,

but always has to be good enough

to protect my heart from my own thoughts).

So, how can I believe you

when I've never believed anyone,

including you?

I want to believe you

like I've ever believed anyone,

but what I believed never mattered, either.

#tellmeimwrong #thingsthatmakemytherapistlaugh #studiomilkbox #nickanello #writing #poetry #comic art #ink drawing #oppositever

[studiomilkbox]

Capacity to be Instead

What I thought was alone wasn't. 

I didn't know what being alone was

until you found it instead, all the more important.

Something you could devote yourself to.

Something that rewarded you with fulfillment.

Something you were gladly consumed by.

Something to pursue a future with.

Something that easily pushed me to the bottom,

under your dirty laundry,

and spare time,

and conversations you always forgot

you already told me I wasn't included in.

Something that enriched you.

Something that stole

all of your generous thoughts,

and loving consideration.

Something that occupied

all your beautiful attention

and made you ugly to me.

I didn't know what alone was

until I was left with excuse after excuse

as to why you couldn't.

Informing me of my worth to you

because you wouldn't.

Night after night

eating another piece of me away.

Week after week

growing less interested in your cold leftovers. 

Month after month,

disregarded until I was rail-thin,

picked apart and unrecognizable

until I had nothing left to feed off;

giving, until I had to give up.

Discarding you. Starved to death for you.

I didn't know what alone was

until apology after apology

erased all the worth you held;

the empty words you were left to say

in rushed conversations

you had no time to mean

the words you were prompted to

to reiterate three times over.

Leaving a ghosted image of what used to be,

there for me to hold onto.

I didn't know what alone was

until you lied

and couldn't wait for me to leave.

Leaving you with everything

you couldn't wait to do instead.

#studiomilkbox #nickanello #writing #poetry #capacity to be instead

[studiomilkbox]

#studiomilkbox #nickanello #writing #poetry #comic art #20alarms

[studiomilkbox]

remember the lesson

Darling,

Do you remember what was said?

Don't you remember who spoke first?

Do you remember the words chosen;

cornered and quivering,

as your tremulous-frozen

welled-up-wet eyes, searched for connection 

against the freezer door magnets,

rapt in a plastic, yellow-bellied disbelief inside,

with all the rest of your leftovers 

you couldn't stomach to eat?

I bet you don’t.

Such a default recall of those easy

Floridian-crocodile tears, though;

numbered and knuckled off onto fingers

as they dripped from your refulgent cheek.

But, do you remember how many?

Because I was too busy to count.

Busy, backing myself into the kitchen sink.

I wanted to prove myself so wrong.

Darling, I tried every trick in my books

to counter all the evidence 

you provided as proof I was right;

how you calculated 4 months 

to take away 3 years to equal zero

(plus those 3 bullshit-flash-cards

you pulled from your sleeve,

adding insult to injury),

to make your studied math work.

I mean, in less than 2 

you had already multiplied your time,

carried over all your variables,

and solved the remainder

of your valorous appetence.

So don’t you worry…

It doesn’t matter what was said, after all.

No need to press your memory

to task those basic-text skilled thumbs

(that’s why I wrote it all out for you).

It doesn't matter what you thought

or how you felt.

It's what you did.

--

It doesn’t matter how badly you acted

like you wanted to feel so fractured

and broken and caught off guard

(though I could never figure out

how you were caught off guard;

You did what you wanted to do.

You did what you'd rather do.

Isn't that all I need to know

about those 4 months devoid of you?

No one treats someone they love like that.

They treat someone they wanna get rid of

like that).

--

And darling, how can I be sorry 

you were cut oh-so deep,

when you were the only one to apologize

(over and over, for that matter,

for reasons that still escape me)?

You bled me out, quietly, while I blamed myself

for my inadequacy of not noticing

what you helped show me so aptly;

that all I was, was just…

in breaking our silence first.

If all 3 times divides us into 1, 

and if you were always that simple to figure out,

I suppose it was my own fault… 

for not learning, once (or twice),

only in hopes, before this third sinks in.

Because maybe it's not what you did…

Maybe it's that I needed

so much of your help to see, clearly,

the person you've always been.

And that, you're not really worth missing.

So, there's a story, expounded and solved,

where you’re learned as a liars-lesson, darling

(it's a sad, lonely-little story

that no one will ever ask me to tell them).

It was always about you, after all.

It's got three acts:

an introduction,

an address to loss,

and the anger of that loss.

That's it…

it has no end.

Don't you remember how it ended?

#neither do i #thingsthatmakemytherapistlaugh #studiomilkbox #nickanello #writing #poetry #spoken word #rememberthelesson

[studiomilkbox]

Schizoid

Deep inside myself, my love feels relentlessly painful... all it does is hurt, in hopes that people close to me feel just like I do.

A crushed-Insignificant and achingly hollow kind of hurt.

I just broke up with a lady to protect her from this painful thing in me that wouldn't allow me to love her back… the way it's so easy for the rest of you.

One part of me said I was doing the right thing.

One part said I wasn't.

In the middle, I found it cruel and unfair to be so torn that I felt she deserved better (don't we all).

Funny way to protect somebody.

Everyday I feel my love the way you feel your love, only my crossed wires receive that message as worthlessness. Even in a healthy relationship.

Imagine how many times your heart swells every day... 

To me that feels like a consuming anguish, torn between a lonely, temper-mad envious, kicking-screaming little tantrumy kid that is starved-desperate for it; malnourished and fed lies by a terribly possessive, manipulative monster that denies him the ability to feel anything except guilt and shame for wanting love in the first place.

So much that once he's allowed a toy, he's driven by privation to break it. So no one else can play with it.

I've lost a lot of good people over a lotta years… not knowing I've been buried in a hole of recusing turmoil my whole life, because I never knew what this was… pouring a lifetime of alcohol in that hole to float and drift covertly amidst you.

Ya see, I just couldn't stop drinking. Otherwise I'd feel this. Every day. Because turmoil is my baseline.

Five years of sobriety's only reward is feeling more like myself than I have in the past 25 years… the problem is, I feel like what I felt as a child. Empty and starving. Ravenous in a world, surrounded by feasting animals.

For years now I haven't really been able to feel anything about anything. Walking blind, oblivious of this black hole inside me sucking the light and joy out of everything that came close, as well as everything I do. everything I think.

Can't tell you how incredible 'nothing' feels like… it doesn't even hurt, because pain is informative. It's just a collapsed emptiness, ignorant of its helplessness.

Heartache isn't the opposite of heart-swell.

Heart-hardening is.

It's a heavily fortified suit of armor worn over the opposite of love.

But it protected me. This shutdown protected me by closing off all sensation. It kept me from feeling the unstoppable force of destructive love, breaking over my immovable object-relationships with the last few things that gave meaning to my life. In hopes to keep them safe from arrows of loss that had already penetrated; trapped in a suit of armor, bleeding internally.

It's an endless maintenance trying to stop wounds from bleeding out while trying to polish an inadequate form of defense from external attack.

Five years is a long time to live without your most prized coping device. It's a long time to live as a black hole too.

It makes you seek out anything that can serve as a surrogate. 

I'm tired of using other people as a crutch.

I'm tired of indifference all the time.

I'm tired of lying and cheating and stealing from everyone just trying to scavenge off what they feel, pretending I made 'em feel it.

(Breathe) I've been at rock bottom before. Collecting damaged pieces and throwing out the broken ones… it leaves you with so few things to put back together to function as a whole animal in hopes to live long enough to replace what you've been forced to give up. Forcing yourself to live without.

Telling yourself it's all for the best.

That you've done the right thing...

Because, jesus christ, there's no such thing as a rock bottom in a black hole.

Recovery is a hard road for a scavenger. It's a constant crisis, searching for water to fill your gut to stave off hunger pangs of something that filled you so completely.

It's a lot of rewiring to connect, when you've never learned how to attach.

I'm jealous how easy it is for you to switch and change and get what you want, bearing witness while struggling constantly to get just a small piece of what I need.

And yet at the same time, it's absolute torture to take active part in something you've taken for granted so much, you honestly feel you don't deserve it.

It's a take no prisoners aftermath.

I have two warring factions inside me fighting each other, needlessly, for supremacy. One is a scared-stiff little kid, afraid to say or feel anything, lost in the bottom of my heart, crying in fits of frustration because I won't let him grow up. One is an angry-voracious mouth with spider legs for teeth, burrowing up and down through my spinal canal, looking for its next bone-meal. They're both trapped inside, isolating the conflict from collateral damage in solitary confinement.

It's my battle with addiction, against coping… because I want a drink, but I can't drink, because drinking only hurts me. And if I allow myself to, I won't stop.

I want love, but I won't feel love, because I don't want my love to hurt you.

And if you allow me to, I won't stop.

To those of you I've loved too much, I'm sorry.

Caught-22.

I did my malfunctioning best.

Stop.

I'm doing my best to atone.

Catch-44.

Doing my best to live without.

STOP.

#studiomilkbox #nickanello #writing #poetry #schizoid

[studiomilkbox]

…and NON-COMMUNICATION

How much of this should I let go 

having been asked to relent 

by my phantom-liminal voices 

lost in time, stolen by winds

fighting for a chance to matter

against a defensive flight away

from your deliberate, neglectful,

frozen-blind sea-change; 

sold-out over the territories I tread

that I’ve traded for a co-paychecked 

conscience an hour a week

under repair, remodel, and rewire,

painted a pale-faded blue 

such as dawn follows her terminator; 

sailed-out over my torrential waves 

tumbling out in my surge of seas, 

breathing like tropical thunder thrums 

under the weather-watching eyewalls

that won’t ever see again

or will ever hear from again;

churning and crashing through,

as a fallen tree in your forests,

soundlessly, without witness.

How much do you want to know 

when you never asked

while I slept right next to you? 

Lying in wait as a slathering

opportunistic scavenger mouth, wanting. 

Tongue tied and swallowing air 

gulped from the unused pillow

residing next to my weary head, 

restless and wary of your untold black lies 

snored and giggled-out by your terrible laugh 

in your dreams,

at your desk,

working all night.

Or your years of calm never-good-enough 

childish war-criminal activity 

that'll never pay off the debts of atonement 

placed upon my hide, up to the neck 

on a chopping block; three times over

and off with my head.

How much do you

live inside a fist of breath 

behind my foaming teeth-clenched 

taught like spun iron with any thought of you.

STILL draining the last of this honesty 

I’ve poured for your permission 

over of the half-truths you spilled in secrecy, 

judging me unfairly; quietly behind my back

for months until I had to sever you, spinelessly. 

Tearing pages from a pile of books on fire,

I read too fast to answer the questions

that confused me about the emotional tyranny

you calculatingly triggered me into 

because of your cowardice to step forward 

and treat me like a human being, 

instead of a nonsensical nuisance

you could brush aside

in your quest to heal

from a pain you caused;

Knowingly.

How much can I write off 

all your fallen leaves that ripple meaninglessly 

in my attention, spanning wasted years 

licking at my stoic shoreline.

Not waving, but walking 

wordlessly licking my grin 

of the blood cut from a wound 

that grew over what your carrier-diseases 

cheated me out of a future you sought

in excuses repeated three times over

(and off with your head),

without a singled-out thought 

towards how you were also going to carry 

an empty promise-infected child along with;

cut to carve a division between us 

that rivals my challenger deep.

Leaving, crestfallen with a bitter smile 

tasting of rust and alkali,

and a liar's silence.

#studiomilkbox #nickanello #writing #poetry #and NON-COMMUNICATION