Invisible Man

Hovering over my shoulder

Your deep voice ringing

Right next to my ears.

Invisible man, perhaps I can’t see you

But surely you are there.

How could you disappear when I

Need you the most?

You shape shift to blend into shadows

So no one actually sees but me

They hear me talking to walls

Laughing maniacally in the dead of night

Screaming into thin air

They see me glance behind me

Restless, waiting for you to appear.

To them you don’t exist

But to me you’re real.

Because you have to be.

Or else what they say is true.

That I’m in over my head,

Completely unhinged,

That if you peered into the depths

Of my skull,

You’d see a vortex of blackness

Sucking in the very existence of light.

To be honest, I don’t even quite

See you really, I just know that you’re there.

That’s what you told me, what you whispered

What you fed me in my despair

When no one would talk to me

But blank walls, thin air, tall ceilings

And you.

After a long day,

I stagger into your arms

Your deep voice ringing,

So soothing, lulling me to sleep.

To dreamless sleep,

Where I don’t see anything

But faces one after another

Haunting me, threatening to consume me

To erase my whole being, the glued-on mask

Like that black vortex sucking in light.

While I sleep, you sweep away

The skeletons in plain sight

Come to stand and decorate those blank walls

Because they blend in, don’t they?

Melt into the cracks when I dare to wake

So I can just pretend that the words they say

Don’t make sense

That I’m not crazy

Not unhinged

Not insane

Not broken

Not completely undeserving of you,

Invisible man.

So I’ll just keep pretending that I don’t

Talk to skeletons on the wall

Laugh at nothing

Crumble at the thought

That you could possibly leave.

When I stumble home in drunken stupor

High off the paint fumes surrounding me,

My mind a million miles away

I fall into you

And you catch me.

Because that’s all I ever wanted.

A safety net, something to hold onto me

When I was so far away from Earth

That my feet couldn’t find a place to land.

So every time I plummeted,

I crashed.

Invisible man, I am so afraid

That it’s just me, that I’m all alone

That no one wants me

That no one sees past

The glued-on mask

The small, dark eyes

The skeleton poking out

From under my skin

That broke open when I crash landed

Hiding the war inside me

But hiding in plain sight

Like the grotesque lines all over me.

I guess I’ll just keep crawling back 

Tripping on psychedelics 

That I don’t even have to ingest

I just inhale the fucking fumes

From the blank skeletal walls

Closing in around me

And wait for you in the haze

Of hallucinogenics that you said

Would cure the sickness in me.

To create a world unlike the one I’m in,

To feel something unlike

The nothing

The black vortex

That just eats me whole, leaving me

Numb. 

Invisible man, you cradle me

When I bleed, when I make myself

Run rivers red, drying out my veins

Dehydrating myself like the skeletons

In my walls, in my closet

My darkest secrets

That I hide all around me, but no one sees

Because no one cares to see

Why would they care to see?

If all they will ever find out

Is that I’ve been proving them right all along.

But I can’t keep doing this,

You can’t be my crutch.

I’ve had too many, hid for too long

And I’m getting tired that I can only ever 

See you when I am simmering 

In my own misery.

That you are the only one

Who can pull me out of my hell

That you are the only one

Who tells me you want me

That you are the only one,

The only one that can save me.

Because I would’ve done anything

For someone to save me

Anything for someone to love me

Anything for someone to want me

So it doesn’t matter who 

Or what they want with me

I just needed someone to believe

That I should be real

And I found you.

You told me that the world is unkind

That it has always hated me, resented me,

That the world outside and everyone in it

Didn’t believe that I should live

Or stand on my own.

That because it always told me that 

I was weak

And ugly

And unwanted

And vile

And repulsive,

I should do the same and turn my back on it.

So why keep venturing far away?

Why propel myself off the ground,

Why keep searching for something

KNOWING that I’ll find nothing

Why keep tying my heartstrings

In knot after knot,

When I could cast it all away and say

This world is for naught and fall

Back into your arms, 

Your deep voice ringing,

So I can just keep pretending

That I’m fine just 

Talking to walls

Laughing at nothing

And screaming into thin air

When I think of you leaving.

I tried it myself,

I put one foot in front of the other

And I kept doing that

Again and again,

And yes, I fell, like you said

And this time, your arms weren’t there.

I could hear their whispers,

Their attentive stares,

Bemused that I was even trying

And I could hear what they were saying

Crazy,

Completely unhinged,

Ugly,

Vile,

Repulsive, 

Grotesque,

Barely human,

But if that’s the words they choose,

So be it.

They’re not mine.

But this time I felt something

In the dead air,

Could it be?

The slightest of breezes 

Against my glued-on mask.

A feeling against my broken skin,

Something, just a little bit

And that was enough.

I try to grab ahold,

But how do I catch a breath of wind?

I just followed it, one foot after another,

Just one step after the next, 

And I kept going and somehow,

Those voices, those whispers all around me,

The skeletons on the walls,

Started to crumble.

My heart beat faster, this time,

I don’t just know the black vortex is there,

I feel it growing, swirling, starting to consume me,

So I take a leap and tear off the glued-on mask.

This time, I let them see.

Not you, but me.

All the cracks my blood seeped through,

All the holes I picked in my skin,

The craters where my bones broke,

Where I beat myself up for being nothing

Like the words I wanted them to say about me.

In the faces I saw in my dreamless sleep,

I never saw my own.

I never knew what I looked like, because

I was too busy imagining you.

I can feel and I am fire,

Burning a hole in the black vortex

Consuming the glued-on mask in flames

Call me crazy, deranged, completely unhinged

Call me insane, vile, repulsive

Call me whatever the fuck you want to

Because I’m not pretending anymore.

So if you don’t want me,

That’s okay.

You needed me to need you,

And now I don’t.

Maybe I’ll still sometimes

Talk to walls,

Laugh at nothing, 

Scream in pain.

But so be it. 

I’ll keep walking forward on my own.

But if I’ve learned anything at all,

It’s that this too shall pass.

And dear invisible man,

Skeletons aren’t made of glass.

They are stronger than you will ever know,

And they’re not just real, they can even grow.

So goodbye, invisible man, I bid you well.

Thank you for coaxing me out of my shell.

Because even though the lights sure are bright,

At least I’m finally standing in plain sight.