Reminders Poem by Robin Shuler

Waking up
feels like dreaming
when reality becomes pretend.

Close my eyes
and hide it deep inside.

Whispering only what you need to hear.
But do you hear?
Far away as you are.
-Inconsistent in your shifting attempts to die.

They hear.
They've always heard exactly what the want to hear from my fumbling lips
- cracked and dry from all the words I never wanted.
They hear what they need.
Take what they desire from the sobs.
Oblivious to their meaning.

Keep on searching.
A little deeper
A little further into the shadows
A little more desperate...
- still.

I never know what to say to you.
never understood you.
never found you.

Are you even still inside?
back behind their expectations?

Their deffinitions define who I am
until I don't know who I am.

Lost. Drowning in those
suffocating brilliant lights.
Bright enough to burn through me.

Shinning through my skin - deep within
everything I pretend to be.

Everything I am.
- that I never was.
Never knew.

And the chill is all that's left behind
-crunching footsteps that echo in the
emptiness that's crowded
- like a subway
- like the cars in the rush...

Always rushing forward.
rushing toward tomorrow.
toward death.

Is it so wrong to want today?
Wrong of me, I know it is, to desire now
instead of tomorrow.

Bursting inside.
too full.
too damn full of nothing that it crowds out all
-of me.
- of what I could have been.

Should have been.
Would have been.
- But forgot.

I don't want to be her anymore.
I wish I could find you.
wishfully wanting to know you better.
- Maybe then I'd understand all these
Desires.

But you ran away before she could hurt you.
Left before the damage began.
Escaped the scars.
Scars that no one ever sees.
Because they dissappear behind the smiles.

I'm still here. Still wearing the stains that you
... you couldn't bear to have touch you.
I've suffered them for you
- as I waited for your return...
I made it through.
I survive.

A little worn.
torn.
Broken.

But still breathing. Shallow as it may be.
still beating. Painful as it is.

- Still Searching.
Digging through the glittering dust that clings like fresh dark mud.
Black with life.
Black like dirt should be.
- Stuck under my fingernails - reminders
that where I am is never where you wanted to be.