Nothing is what it used to be;
This lesson I know from the sewage of youth.
The hours spent deciphering the meaning behind his words,
And the years after spent deciphering how meaningless they were.
Sucking on the icy tips
Of Chapman’s cherry popsicles,
I was seven and he was nine
Those summer days wasted away
Spent wilting over his love letters,
All my petals dead from heartache’s wrath.
He was my sun,
And I was the foolish marigold who took too much all at once.
Then I was seventeen,
And he was nineteen,
And we went out for ice cream
But he only ever ordered water
And I only ever wanted cherry popsicles.
So I rode shotgun
And we shared a cherry lolly,
And it was then that I realized
It was no longer a river of innocent sugar dripping from our mouths,
But instead the bitter blood of our false gods.
And the onslaught of my teens
Taught me how to pick the meat off the bones,
And how to be okay with hate
And how to tolerate the pain
Of their rigid teeth ripping through my flesh
Without a single hint of remorse.
Nothing is what it used to be,
But now I know the difference
Between the candy-coated kisses
And the bloodthirsty grimace
That hides itself within the branches
Of a rosy-tinted lover.
Those rosy-tinted lovers;
They rip you from the inside out,
They shake you and they love you,
They make you an extension of themselves
But nothing is what it used to be
And you are not what you used to be;
You.
You are an individual and you stand on your own pedestal,
Looking down on the ones who only lifted you up for an instant.
An everlasting moment of delusion,
That’s what belonging to them felt like.
But nothing is what it used to be,
I am not what I used to be;
I am not.
My faith is not what it used to be.
How many times have I looked up at the sky
And begged at the hand of God,
Begged for his mercy,
For his grace to drip from the tips of the angel’s wings
Down into my mouth
So that I could consume His divinity,
Have His purity fill me up
Until I have grown wings of my own.
But alas, I am left not begging at the hand of God,
But begging at the hand of those from my past,
Seeking validation,
Seeking closure,
Seeking comfort.
And I am left to look inward;
Study the meaning behind my own confused decisions,
Unearth the base of my baseless sadness,
Rooted only in my lack of constant euphoria.
But to pine for such a thing is a mistake in itself,
For true happiness exists only as wandering through life with one’s arms open,
Not as an intoxicating phantom of a dream that must be chased into the night.
Why go beyond when we can have this?
Why not settle for beauty and avoid the madness?
Nothing is what it used to be
And nothing is what it is.
Perception overrides truth,
Consumption overrides youth,
And we will be left to rot
In the hands of our broken history,
With not even our hearts to call our own.