I remember when I could remember when

I don’t remember my way
Around there anymore
Return to vacation
In the prison box whose bars
I threw myself against
Now I go back again
For reasons unexplained
And invariably
I get lost amongst
The tree lined streets
And mansion-filled boulevards
A new generation of prize won kids

But I can still find the path
To your door
And to the house
Where his mom used to live
Or that brick covered steeple
We worshipped and wallowed in
No longer recognizable
From when it was ours
The rest is foreign now
Unknown and surprising
Like some country I’ve never been
A language I don’t speak

But that doesn’t stop me
From driving around
In my mother’s purple beast
Trying to find our ghosts
Grasping at uncatalogued pieces
Which have become faded
And tangled in my memory
Vine covered and unmapped

Getting lost
In our old stomping ground
Those little corners and crevices
Where we carved out
Our greatest creation
And our greatest destruction
Fragments now sought after
In the mind that tried so hard to forget

Closer

It's a funny thing, change
It just shows up
Unannounced
Uninvited
Crashing the party
Or starting the party, maybe

Everywhere,
People are noticing the change in me
Like I woke up
One morning
As myself

I don't tell them
That it was a hard labour
Of many days struggling
Of trying to stop change
In its tracks

But it's doing now
And I am powerless to stop it
I don't know if I would
If I could

I feel strange
Closer to a whole person
Than I've felt in many years
Not foreign and fighting
The skin I find myself in

But it's delicate
So easily I could slip back
Into the ghost of a being
I've walked around as
Empty as an old beer bottle

Do you even recognize me?

I run, it's just what I do

Sometimes I wish you hadn't come back
Which is terrible to say
And terrible to think
Especially considering
All the good things you do for me

But I'm living with a shell of a person
That I used to know
And every day
I wander by
The shell of the person
I used to be
And I was doing okay
Before you came
Being a shadow
Of my secret self

Cause I was starting
To rebuild the paper house
Learning to walk again
Learning to talk
Like a child
Who forgot everything they ever knew
And my progress was just little
Bits of nothing much
One step after another

Until you turned that corner
And coffee spilled everywhere
Now it's every day
A marathon
Making me remember
Or face all those things
That I buried
Long ago for a reason

And maybe I'm better off
Being one of the walking dead
Suburban zombie sellout
It's soul crushing
But it's easier
To be pliable and fit the mold
Than constantly
Fighting the shape of things

And there you stand
Like a pyramid in the desert sun
Grandiose and obvious
Above the rest of us sand dwellers
Demonstration of something truer
Than I can face
And it's a shame
That I run from it
Rather than climbing those steps

Incapable of Being True

I just want to run away
From my life
Just get on a plane
And disappear like I used to
When it was easier to do

And I just want to run
Into the rain
Be cleaned of all my sins
To wash away this dirty feeling
On my skin

I just want to tell it
Like it really is
With all the words
That roll around inside
And tumble to the ground
When I try to open my mouth

But nothing ever comes to nothing
And I can't seem to do anything
But wash the dishes
And cry under my breath

Suddenly, I lie so easily