We always matched in the worst ways;
Bandages left to develop their own wounds
Too big stolen boots and oversized patched jackets
Hair cropped short due to being unable to bear the weight and feel of it
Guitars neither of us learned how to properly play
Eyes that didn’t hold images and light in them but rather projected them
Bags that couldn’t hold their own weight
Feverish fangs after flesh, even our own would do
Bodies practicing pre death algor mortis ahead of our minds
Smile lines matching palm lines
Always wanting more to be more
Dreaming of our dream countries that could only exist through dreams
The horizon being all we could go towards
Homes in not having one
Whatever we managed to find being more meaningful than what was given to us
Expression through everything but ourselves
Not being wanted yet kept and being unable to understand it
Being unable to admit what was different about us was damaging
Dependent on other people’s lives to keep living
Letting whatever wanted to crawl all over us; germs, insects, people
Hurting ourselves and others out of loathing, out of revenge, out of pain, out of unawareness, for
every single potential reason that leads to the same result
While fighting shadows of sleep, shadows of dreams, shadows of people, that darkness always
creeping towards us, always right behind our corners and backs
Because we believed everything of and in the sky must fall eventually, including the sky itself
We really weren’t wearing a mask, we were the mask because there was no face underneath
Now there’s not even that
I’m left to balance all the shards of us on stained glass windows
While trying not to fall through myself
From the holes we broke into it and the walls keeping us all in place
So I don’t worry about becoming like you, since I know I already am
What I have to get rid of and what I’m allowed to keep is what I’m actually searching for
There’s probably even more I haven’t brought up, probably forgot or overlooked despite my
desperate scrounging
(We’ve always been scavengers to survive, raccoons and crows and strays our accomplices
But I was a kid, you simply have not grown)
Whatever, I don’t care to check, not yet
Because you are left a phantom of a phantom of a phantom
While I’m stuck still living even when I’m not alive
I don’t know if I can bring you back
But I know I’m not allowed to die, not yet
I wish it was at least funny
A native Rhode Islander, while residing in a southern state, writes folk punk country style stuff about how they feel trapped within the whole country and life itself using an acoustic guitar lit alight by fireflies and cell phone glows. As both a human becoming increasingly defined by work, isolation, and overly emotional detachment and as a bird longing to fly with the others while being left wingless, Wren Spardello tries to learn how to navigate a body and a society alike that is constantly fighting them to try come up with a way that they can reach the sky again. Wanna fly too?
"Guitar Serial Number 001" by Dave Williss is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
