Solemnity

Is that what you meant?
When I waved you off indifferently.
Did your eyes feel heavy with sleep
Despite a fuller night than ever before?
Your voice was muted, I recall
You seemed calm to me then.
Less angered,
Was it something more?
Did you feel anger, listlessly inside?
A biting snarl, but too weak to emit it.
Is that loneliness that churns my stomach?
Or could it be hunger already?
Could this be what you meant?
But foolish me, I ignored you.

Not very uplifting, is it? But I fear I feel hopelessly detached this year. I keep moving, but most of the time it is without truly seeing. My eyes are open but the images blur together and I muffle out the sound.

I have not naturally strung more than three sentences together, side by side, in quite some time. Someone I know mistook this new-found solemnity of mine for a calmness, but I am still easily angered. I simply cannot find the energy to show it.

For a while now I have felt that I am condemned to forever repeat the same back and forth with someone that I dread seeing. Lines of disappointment, guilt and anger with someone I may have once considered a friend. Now I wonder if she ever could have qualified for something so prestigious. Her face litters my nightmares. She'll say something and I will not respond, for I can no longer think of anything to say to her. Standing near her takes an effort I was not before aware existed. She pushes off the past so easily, but I can not. Instead of a glint in the air, I imagine a knife in my skin, what could have been. I wonder if I'm in the wrong to ignore her, and no one else can seem to answer me.

I am told I look tired, but I've been sleeping sometimes more than nine hours each night despite once understanding myself to be a bit of an insomniac.

I wonder how I could have let things so simple or so old get into my head like this.