attention

I find myself yearning for your attention.

Bending myself over backwards, contorting every fibre of my being in efforts to emulate what I think you want me to be.

With each axon that fires within the depths of my brain, I hear echoes of you. I pluck the notes from the air and rearrange them until I have convinced myself that these whisperings spell out your name.

Each second that passes, I spend dissecting every word you have ever said to me. Each uttered consonant. Each breath you took between sentences.

I’m repulsed by this fixation I have moulded.

Manipulating every moment we have shared, attributing meaning to nothing.

Pouring my heart into an empty vessel.

This caricature I’ve built of you.

I tell myself how narcissistic this must make me. Obsessing over a version of you that doesn't exist, a version I constructed. Dedicating myself, to my own creation. This version I so desperately want you to be.

A version I have grounds to love.

I suppose the most crushing part of all of this isn't my unrequited love. It isn’t the countless hours I have spent on a hollow actor,

but simply the insignificance of myself to you.

At least if you hated me I would exist to you.

These tears that prick my eyes feel selfish. How can I mourn the loss of a love I never had?

I bundle myself in layers of protection.

I grow petrified that the stench of desperation will seep out of my pores and snake up your nostrils.

I scrape away at my skin in the shower obsessively. Ridding myself of that god-awful smell.  For you I would carve away my own flesh, I would pluck out every tendon and vein if I thought it would make you acknowledge me. I’d rid myself of my ugly contents and stitch myself back together at the seams.

Tell me what you want me to be.

You can never know how much I want you. I will never be that crazed.

My heart is too aware of this dance I perform, playing the role of one when this ballad begs for two.

Until there comes a day I may present some use to you, I will remain waiting.

Waiting for you to give me purpose.

For your attention is all I desire. Without it, I am not human.

I am cattle waiting for my farmer.

I am a rotting corpse waiting to be buried.

I am without meaning.

These words burden the page before me, for I cannot hold them anymore. Too heavy they have grown to lay in my arms.

My breathing has grown laboured with all this weight I’ve had to bear.

Instead, they must splatter onto a canvas. Spilling from my arteries, I paint this page with my very being.

Another gift to you that you’ll never unwrap.