Can you hear me?

There's something in these words

I am trying to get across to you

and only you,

or at least there is a way

that only you know me

and think of me,

this is our moment

HERE

in all of these words,

sit and read as I do my thing.

 

There's a scream in the distance,

but somehow it's piercing into my brain

as if it were a shotgun fired just beside my ear,

and my brain feels like it has exploded,

or at least

feels empty.

 

The scream is mine

it echoes into you as you read,

there is no cry for help,

and such thing as the helpless.

 

Are you reading this?

Girls who touched my heart

sometimes manipulated it,

because love sex and sorrow are a

two-way street

and sometimes pitchers hurt most.

 

Read these lines,

to all my closest friends,

do you remember all the times we

should have died or

at least given up on living,

but we never let each other?

 

There's someone I don't want to write about anymore and I'm not sure what to do about it.

I figured a book would be enough, but it seems there are endless thoughts,

and is it you,

or is it just me?

 

Maybe it's both,

that special connection between a con artist

and a fraud

where every move was a bigger lie until

it all became so top-heavy we couldn't stomach it

and especially,

we couldn't stomach ourselves.

 

That's the birth of the hatred that peeled us like

the salted edamame we snacked on in between

games of cribbage,

good and bad television shows,

and acting like children in the best and worst ways.

 

Flaying is a more suitable word than peeling,

it skinned us alive like only the most savage hunters

and the worst part is that we were both too stupid

or too self-absorbed to realize what was going on,

or maybe,

our inner con artist deceived our selves into it.

 

I killed that con artist;

I trekked him through the jungle and

over-grown mutant forests that surrounded my mind,

I grabbed him by the jugular and

I did not have any mercy left,

maybe I gave you my last helping.

 

Could the loss of the con artist be

the emptiness I feel?

 

I appear as a stranger to my closest friends,

and to have grown up to everybody else,

but what if it comes back,

or if it pulled the best fake death since

Sherlock?

 

So good that we never know the difference,

and what if I am it,

or maybe it killed me?