When did it start?
When words fell upon deafened ears.
Honest sentiment was but a mirage
Kindness stripped and mangled within the shards of a broken mind

When did kidding myself that I am who I thought I was became an over bearing fantasy,
That life could treat me well
When I knew all along that the self deprecating reality of the world,
would show me I have nothing to offer

How did I allow myself to feel strength in self worth
Knowing the humiliation of being the joke to everyone's comedic stance;
On how to be human
How to be a man
How to be normal.

When did it start?
When love was something to fear
Fighting the self fulfilling prophecy of inevitable knowledge
That I will lose all that I hold with frayed heart strings.

I fear the day that they will all snap at once
When there will no longer be a safety net
When the only comfort I feel is the reality that in my fall, the darkness never ends

Today I am an invisible rolling tear
Heavier than a stone on the cusp of a cliff face
Looking out over oceanic views
Awaiting the topple.
If I found a flower today
In a walk in the rain
It would be the strength that holds me in its petals
For there is no force that could make me crush its spirit
To stop me in my self destructive momentum
All I need is its beauty in my path

(Voice 1-male)
This is not living
This sitting, nightly arrangement
Its purpose of entertainment
How could I care for the world around if I cannot hear it, touch it, taste it for myself?
We watch the same screen from opposite ends of the world
You have the best seat and I allow it, so you don't miss out
And we fill the void between us with empty crisp packets and the last dregs of a lonely can.
Once not so long ago
You would rest your legs over mine and consume the space.
And although I complained,
I never once minded, not really.

(Voice 2-female)
I wish you would touch me
Like you used to
Before we stagnated somewhere between Eastenders and Big Brother.
The way you would run your fingers up and down the soles of my feet.
Before work piled on the pressure
And you became too tired to tell me about your day
I remember when we didn't need the tv,
When our entertainment was the sound of each other’s voices,
Or the crackle of vinyl as we made love under its arches of sound,
Upon this very sofa
Where we now sit in awkward silence, together, yet apart.

(Voice 1-male)
I wish you still asked me about my day,
Even though I may not answer because I don't want to bring you down
Still it would be nice to know you cared.
I wish that remote would separate itself from our relationship,
Instead of being our adulterant, as we use it for the only pleasure between us.
I wish that at the end of the night, you would sit with me in silence,
The way we used to
Just wrapped in each other’s arms
The only entertainment we needed then,
Was listening for the moment our heartbeats synchronised
I wish we could have that again
Instead of you going to bed without so much as a good night kiss.

(Voice 2-female)
I wish you would follow me to bed
Instead of wallowing in front
Of your latest boxset conquest
You don't even say goodnight
As if I am doing you a disservice
And i wish you knew that in bed I cry
Longing for you to be as enthralled by me
As you is the TV.
When was our bed no longer the source of entertainment?

(Voice 1-male)
I wish you knew that I cry when you go to bed
Missing the time
When we were more important than sleep.
I wish I could turn off the television
I wish I could turn off my mind.
But I see that you no longer want me,
Or have any interest in me
When all I need is for you to ask
How are you?
Throw your arms around me
Take me away from the world
I need no other entertainment than that
Most of all
What I wish
Is that we could silence the world
And just be honest
And see that we are not that different
We are the same as we used to be
Before television took the life
Out of you and me
I wish, just for once, we would talk

There is a point at which I want to sleep
When the ashes of yesterday’s fires still burn embers of memories
Clinging to my lungs as a thickening tar
I take the words that cover false sentiment
Using them as kindle to keep the fire alive
Allowing it to burn me, deconstruct my organs
Until I am nothing more than entertainment for you
Lifeless, worthless
A **** of jokes
A **** to stamp out and extinguish

I lay lost under a pile of incoming papers
Stacked news of inspirational stories that fail to resonate.
The words drip upon my face
And slip through my fingers
Yet the sentences wash away
With the confidence you drain from me
Until I know that I am only what you make me
An anecdote of anti-man cliché
A burden,
An unnecessary use of space

I am no longer here
For I can no longer look into your eyes
They are drained of the life you once pictured
And replaced with an alternative lifestyle to my own
How I cannot let you look into mine,
For I know they no longer shine for you
Like when I held an expectation of what I hoped love would be
And told myself that this was it

When I lied

When I lied to myself
And I lied to you

When I tried to be the person you wanted
And cut my limbs to shape your needs
Fitting for friends and family commentary
Because, simply because, I wanted someone to say I love you
Even if you didn’t mean it
I shouldn’t have lied
Wasting your life, for so long convincing myself, and the world that we were fine
That I am the problem, not you, not us

But it was always us that was the problem

When there was nothing left
After I lived so long nocturnally in the darkness
And learnt to walk blind
My eyes shined again
They shine brighter, like they have shone for the first time
I have finally been born to an understanding of love
And not even you can take that away
I place that light around me
Within the darkness of this home
Though it isn’t your light to share
And I fail to feel guilty for that
For it is the light that now makes me
I use its brightest beams to look at myself and say that;
Yes, I deserve more
And that you deserve more
And that we, deserve more than each other

Sometimes the only guilt I feel, is that I don’t feel guilty at all

Sometimes I walk with heavier steps
When I feel the claustrophobic push of gravity weigh down upon me.
It feels as if I know the clouds are coming
Before the skies darken
And the air pressure thickens
I predetermine the outcome of my adventures
Through smokey *** curtains I see a future I fear
The self-fulfilling prophecy of stifling my own pace
By saying I am not good enough for you
Eventually you will tire of my jealously,
My overreaction.
It is in my nature to destroy the happiness I can see in front of me
To burn the path that leads to open arms
Arms that belong to a destiny that says
It could be us.

I am scared.

I am scared that I cannot accept what is the right way
That I am ageing into the mundane
And soon you will see
That you have so much life to live
Outside of my trapped stance

I am scared

That the clouds will part and the sun will shine
And blind you into forgetting me
As my warmth becomes suffocating
And you shred off the layers of pain that comes from loving me.
There is a dense sense of empathy;
For the broken poet only shines within the thoughts of his muse.
So who do I become,
When not in your comfort?
A shell. A breeding ground of irrational thinking
Though above these thoughts
The dampening worry of loss
And self humiliation of kidding myself
Comes one overwhelming thought.
...
I miss you.

You are not the clouds
You are the ground
The path I want to tread
The uneasy route that I deserve to find.
That an ongoing adventure, unknown and excitedly scary
Will keep me young, and alive
With the happy ending
In fairy tale promise that I dream we read together
In arms of embracing mental privilege and togetherness
At ease with the decisions we share
At ease with the comfort of each other.

My love is not that of fiction.
I did not find you within the pages of romance works
Or the flicker of black and white buzz.
I found you falling into my life
Like the gentle pour of refreshing rain on a close autumn eve, in darkening days.
I found you as natural kinship,
As the understanding of understanding why;
Life is worth living.

And I am scared.

I am scared of how I can view the world when I lose you.
When I can no longer see the world through the reflection in your eyes.
When my steps again grow heavy
And I have nowhere to go.

I love you,
Like you love me
There is no ending
Yet I fear the end.
I will forever fear losing you
Until the day I lose you
When my fear is too overpowering.
When the only steps i take are those over beaten ground
When I trample the last of my confidence
When I push you away, when I can no longer bear to see you hurt because of my love.
When you realise
That You deserve better than me
And I don't deserve you at all.