x e n o p h o b i a (n):

the fear of the unknown.

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Some people don't dream. I do.

I see flashes of him

of his slender fingers pushing down.

Then I hear it

the familiar click of a memory being made.

It's all in black and white. All the light has faded.

I dream of a butterfly in full color as its wings caress the wind.

The one thing it feels is free. It can fly anywhere it wants. No complications. Just the blues and purples blending together as they're carried away. And I wonder whats it like to fly. To be free.

And I imagine him in a field, camera in hand. A butterfly will land on the prettiest of bluebonnets

and then I smell it.

The chemicals staining the air as the memory develops.

In my dream it comes out electric. As it hangs among the smiling of photos of black and white.

It reminds me of a blackhole in the strangest of ways. But it's not dark and dreary. Instead we are. Gray is replaced with pink. White with green.

Anything but nothing.

And then I taste it.

The bitterness on my tongue from the words that cannot define themselves from right and wrong.

They seep out with the melody of a song. With a cadence of pain.

No ones meant to get hurt. But they do. Because that's what happens in our world.

Everything is black and white. Good and bad.

We just dont know what category we fall in.

And then when everything else falls away to white, it happens.

I see it.

The glimpse of tiny words and big secrets. The flash as the camera snaps my last moments of clarity.

We've taken our own light away.

A butterfly can flap its wings from a million miles away and make a tsunami in a blur of opaques and pales

and yet it cannot control us.

It is not what takes a toll on our hearts.

We are.

We drain each other like a candle being smothered.

It goes black. And then we go back

to endless apologies for things we weren't really sorry for.

Things we might take back if we could. But we can't and so

we forget.

We forget the empty I'm sorrys, the pointless smiles, the backhanded lies. And with it goes the I miss yous, the happy birthdays. We forget the big conversations and the small secrets. We forget everything.

And worst of all
we forget each other.

We lose who we were

who we are.

We lose us.