Mostly ghostly questions

 It’s been a while, but what is normal anymore?  All the melancholy and deeply steeped despair we held before is nothing like the apocalypse we live in these days.  We hope would have thought we’d be here back then?

When I was a boy, I wanted to be a man, and now that I’m grown, I long for youth again.  I guess it’s true what they say, youth indeed is wasted on the young.  And me, the one who needs company, the one who could use a chair so that someone would push him, I’m the one that’s out here lost in the wild.  How could I let myself be tricked into this?  How could I succumb to this?  Did I succumb to this?  Didn’t I elect to do this on my own?

On my own.  On my own again.  There it is.  Here I am and there they are, the screams on the other side of the wall.  Screaming inside my chest, something wants out but my arms aren’t long enough to reach to where you are.

Why does my heart do this?  We never were anything, we never had anything.  So why does my heart reach for something that was never there?  Where does all of this longing come from?  Every time I see another one gone (paired up) I’m a wreck.  Every call that goes unanswered.  Every time you never say “no” because you’re afraid of how I’ll respond.

It’s more than a few men and they’ve ruined it for us all.  It’s more than a few men and I understand why you’re afraid.  I wish you could just say “no” so I know.  I wish I could hear something back.  There is a gap, a void where you could be but I don’t know if that’s where you should go.  I don’t know where you belong, but your nobody’s property.  It’s okay to be afraid, I just wish I could hold onto that for you.

Everything I do in this little gap in the wall.  Everything I do in this exposed brick of a chest is futile.  Do you see the aesthetic of my upper body?  Do you see who I’ve become?  Like a shadow on the wall that you walk by.  A shadow speaking with no response.  Am I a phantom to you?  Am I a catfish you left out in the sun to dry?

Who am I telling this to?  Why are you listening?  Why isn’t there an audience to any of this?  Just whispers, My words are barely audible, but you hear them.  Why don’t you respond?  Who will help me find something to plug this soul into?