Recycle

Is it possible to feel so much older and so young at the same time? To know, with your whole heart that you are accidentally submerged in love again, but that your whole heart can never, might never, and probably wasn't ever immersed in the kind of love you have to give? To constantly yearn for the best, but know the best is only the least of the worst? To be surrounded by ghosts, but feel like the only one who remembers what dying felt like?
Dramatic? Yes, but it's Tuesday.
The season is changing again. We're running ahead of the dying leaves, black ice, and two-day-old cups of chai. We're running out of pavement. I can feel it giving way beneath my feet. I'm still running, like your mouth about our unedited lives while you scratch out the adjectives you used to own with a blood red marker you keep next to your mascara. You'll be the best story he's ever read.
I am slowing to a jog, coming to some metaphorical crossroads between 'through' or 'around'. We've all seen my pattern, the situations I haunt. My clumsy wade through the mess of lovers, friends, family, finances, hopes, habits, and insecurities I've accumulated since the day I blew out the speakers in that piece of shit Cadillac. 
It's dirty. It's exhausting. It's tough on your phone bill. 
I'm sorry. And I mean it. I mean every word I say. Even when I'm the only one who hears. 


We know I'll walk straight through it again, like I never saw it coming. I'll still be better acquainted with your voicemail. I'll scribble another name on the lists of ghosts. You won't hear from me in the morning.