I Can Change

The fourth part of my album writing challenge.

My eyes are fixated on the last piece of pizza crust in my hand. I’ve already eaten my half but yours remains untouched, growing ever-colder, annoyingly perched atop the duvet halfway down the bed, completely stripping my legs of the freedom to stretch out. More annoying still is that it also removes from me the option to pretend that I am sleeping, the option which you, yourself have gone for. So instead, I just sit here, uncomfortably, burning a hole into this doomed crust, vainly hoping that somewhere on its surface lays in wait an answer or even just something suitable to say to break the silence. It’s terrible, two people usually so invested in one another’s conversation, brandishing only a cold shoulder rather than a warm, open heart. I pray to slip into an alternate universe where-in the pizza crust and I have swapped places and it’s preparing to swallow me whole.

I hate wasted time, and that’s exactly what this feels like. The clocks are moving forward and we are staying still. Locked inside this still silence, the vessel for escape sinks slowly on front of our dim eyes, the lock looks incomprehensible and the key is lost to us. Probably somewhere up there on the mountain I forced you to climb. I think that’s where this all began, somewhere between my lack of empathy and the summit. In hindsight, maybe the views from the top weren’t so important but just that we enjoyed the journey. You didn’t.

You could hear the vacuum of space in this silence. Moments pass like a week in jail. The worst part is, I know my crime, I’ve pleaded guilty, even if only in my own head. I’m scanning my lexicon for the phrase to make this better, to make you turn around and just kiss me, so that we could carry on with our weekend, with our forever. I swear i can feel your heart weeping, through your shirt, through the duvet and through the infinite space in-between us. I’ve let my standards slip, that’s something that I vowed never to do, never to let the cruel clutch of complacency grab hold of me. In this moment, to tell you “I love you”, doesn’t feel right, you might choose not to believe me. “I’m sorry” doesn’t feel good enough, I want you to realise I understand what I’ve done and that it’s not just today that’s breaking your heart. 

“I can change”.