Song of Me, Myself, and I

by lexidelaney

June 18, 2015

Live like it eventually means dying.

I sway with the mahogany boat,

31 passengers and 30 life jackets.

And I am always 31st.

And I begin to shiver in the nights that glow until we forget which country we are in,

And the rest of you are sleeping,

I am awake picking at pieces of my future,

And I am alone.

I grow the circles around my eyes,

Like I will look at them and one day wonder where the years have gone.

I think of my mother as I hum the tune to songs I do not remember the name of,

And wait until the echoes grow like salt rings on the walls.

You are sleeping,

And I think I am alone,

Me, myself, and I.

I wake only to know I can sleep again and feel a quiet kind of nothing.

I can’t help but close my eyes in the early hours of the morning,

And see nothing.

Nothing but rooms,

Empty except for instruments I cannot play.

And I am an odd white leaf,

Floating in the black water that is this life.

And I notice that you move with the rush of the river,

Always ahead and out of reach.

It’s so easy to get lost in the black of the water.

I dip through the bends and curves,

Of you,

Of this river.

November is my faulty lung.

It works,

But with the reminder that things were once worse.

I whisper destinies forgotten in the breeze with my lung.

Sometimes I wonder if the cold lives in my chest,

Or maybe it’s the way I feel in December.

Rattling bones make better sounds than silence,

And the shivering is better than being numb.

When I can no longer breathe,

The water brings you back,

And I can reach for you,

And hope for you.

I can invite you to my home,

Introduce you to my mother,

Breathe in your heartbeat,

And discover you.

For when I am sad,

You pick up my pieces.

You help me spend hours finding them,

And glue them back together.

I think of my mother,

The song of me, myself, and I.

You.

I don’t know if I am alone.

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