dreams and guilt

there’s too much.

to think of, to worry about, to rise above, to go under, to drown in, to shake off.

there’s words, work, war.

dreams, love, the maw.

i sink, deeper.

deeper,

deeper.

i feel guilty even for my nightmares

because i get to wake up to safety and drink clean water

even if i can’t go back to sleep

knowing my nightmares are someone’s reality

choking on smoke i can see only through the screen

tasting blood in my mouth that doesn’t belong to me

hearing screams in my head so loud that the silence only makes me crazy

and all those children’s faces haunt me

their blank eyes, whether from death or pain or misery

or from hell fire that has sunk till the bone

i once wanted one of my own

but that was before I saw the world for what i now know

and i would rather die than give this world any of my children

i would rather die than give any of my children this world

but those children, someone’s children, loved children, little children, they already exist

or did

fuck

it is hard not to hate, I agree

but also easier now than before, at least for me

because hating requires anger

and now when I reach for my notoriously relentless rage, all i find instead is grief

drowning me

like the water they don’t have

like the blood they have too much of

like the dust that always floats in the air like poisoned snow

and i’m just so

tired

for that too, I feel guilty

and there is no peace

without lying to yourself

i won’t lie to myself,

I say, knowing through it all that the fact I can think that coherently and not dissolve into tears, slowly drying up like the fields over which a layer of dust lies so thick, not even all the bodies can fertilize it…

means that I already am

lying

again

always

i want to leave

but there’s nowhere far away enough to be

and for this too, I feel guilty

because I am not the one being bombed out of my home and everything I know and love

and I am not the one doing the killing

but what am I doing to stop it?

there’s nothing I’m doing to stop it

what can I do to stop it??

And if there is nothing, does there also have to be nowhere?

I wish I could go live on the moon

where no one can hurt anyone because no one else exists

and I want to look at earth from that distance and go insane from loneliness

not from grief

not from helplessness

not from guilt.

empathy is the enemy, he once said

all his friends are dead

so he probably knew what he meant

all I know is that I don’t really care about anything

I don’t want to water the plants or raise children or rescue animals or save the world

raise plants or rescue children or save animals

raise animals rescue the world save the children

i just want someone to do it all so I don’t have to watch anything suffer

i just want to go somewhere where existing doesn’t hurt

and I feel guilty for that too.

because I’m not hurting. not really.

just going insane

rendered incapable of anything but pacing in circles until it’s time to lie awake for hours, listening to these cries that I can’t separate from things I’ve seen and things I’ve known and things I’ve dreamed

no place left for things I’ve been

let alone things I am or could be

i… still… am

tired

guilty

sorry.

.

forgive me.