That Place

"That Place"

It was night

when I finally finished cleaning.

   You had left long before now,

   weeks before me.

I packed all the boxes 

of things you left,

of things you told me 

to donate away.

I painted over 

the holes 

in the walls.

Cleaned the kitchen. 

Closed the blinds.

Walked through 

and looked at all the empty corners.

This place was what was left

and we are both leaving separately.

   All those emotions experienced here 

      are now among the walls,

among the silence and shadows.

Everything we said and felt

belongs now 

to the history of this space.

Right before I turned out the lights,

That last glimpse I took

I saw all 

the echoes of memory 

dance

through the hallways and the rooms.

Cried as I stood there 

for a second 

remembering

most our moments we spent there 

living our life together.

   But I, only stand here now 

   as a spectator 

watching it play out 

beyond the here and now,

   as only remnants of a happier time,

trying my damndest

to ignore what went wrong.

But I will take with me 

only what will hurt

and leave behind 

all the pleasant parts

because they won't come.

They belong there in the end anyway,

unspoiled,

for the silence and the walls.

We had our moments 

and now have both moved on.

I wonder every now and again 

where you are

but then the parts 

I took with me from that moment

come flooding back in 

and I choose not to remember you.

You're so far away from me now

that I don't know what you look like.

Don't know your name.

Don't even remember things you liked.

I do still remember that place, however.

Where it is. What it looks like.

   The off color of white the walls were painted.

   The stains on the carpet from the wine we spilled.

   The way the bed faced the window from the other end.

   The layout of the bathroom with the shower by the door.

The nights we took showers together 

and made love 

dripping in water.

Laid together on the couch 

as the sun dipped below the horizon.

The way the light shined 

through the kitchen window 

when we made breakfast for each other.

Oh no, There I go, remembering you again.

I can't anymore.

I choose not to think about you.

I won't remember you.

I choose not to remember you.

But 

sometimes I think 

I took too much with me from that place.

Maybe even stole some of those pleasant memories.

But I did it

Just so when I cry

I can find my reasons why.

-Armando Torres

I can't leave

"I can't leave" I close my eyes and there in the black I am distracted by the images and shapes that appear from nothing to paint stories I don't remember but somehow feel familiar. It's odd, the sensations beneath my fingertips feel real, I can feel the walls of this giant city, the grass against my palms, the scent of autumn in my nose. There's something in me that knows this is a dream and another part that seems to be real to me. I lose my sense of time if I linger in here too long then I find the waking world far more strange than when I left it before. I am becoming desensitized to the regular sensations of this real place. I'm being tempted by the unfamiliar that exists when I leave here. My ability to differentiate between you and the person I've come to know in my dream has dwindled and the foggy line between when I'm awake or asleep has all but disappeared. I feel everything from everywhere and I'm so very tired. The people here only serve to hurt. I'm more afraid of the deceit here than the lies I have created for my eyes. It all feels so real there. I'm so far removed anyway that my broken soul cannot heal here. All the reminders seem to disappear when I'm gone. I think I will make peace inside there instead of here. So I lay myself down to sleep knowing this will be the last time I see this waking world. I'm trading the sensations of the here and now for some different kind of experience where I can make what I feel into what is real. I close my eyes and I think this is my dream. However, There's something here I don't quite remember seeing. Something quite unfamiliar. A being separate from me. It's not doing what I want it to do, isn't being what I want it to be. I don't think this is my dream. This isn't my dream. This is something different. I can't feel my reality. I can't pull my mind to awaken. What have I done? I can't leave. I can't wake up. Someone. Anyone! Come find me. Please. Help me. I can't leave.

-Armando Torres

We Are Connected

"We Are Connected"

As much as I hate it,

we are connected,

when you hurt, I hurt.

When you are in pain, I feel the guilt 

and don't know where it came,

I just know 

the strands of existence 

that entwine your heart 

to this plane 

also intertwine 

with mine 

and I sometimes 

can feel 

the pull of purpose 

coming from 

a higher celestial realm 

and feel the things you feel.

I have tried to know why 

but instead now

just accept 

that we are connected 

even though 

you are the most awful thing 

I ever regret allowing 

space 

on the pages of my life. 

You will die someday 

and I expect 

the hurt and emptiness to overtake 

my being, 

allowing myself 

to become something else.

I look around 

and just know 

that no one knows 

the burden of you 

but they all see 

that we are cursed 

with connected tissue

to be one and the same. 

We are connected 

even when we  shouldn't.

 

Residual experiences 

that should have 

long bled 

into the liquid of existence 

and left me the fuck alone. 

But here I am again,

hurting again, 

and not knowing why 

but understanding, 

you are going through something

that I don't fucking care for. 

I hate it. 

I hate that we are connected.

-Armando Torres

Another Face

"Another Face"

I can't heal the hurt that I have

and it's corrosive.

   Rotting me from the inside

and growing to the healthy parts of me.

I feel it at the edges.

   Stretching around the fringes of my face,

tainting my viens, 

ripping me with pain

from tissue to bone 

   and doing it all 

   in secrecy 

as I try to smile 

to hide the hurt 

this pain has wrought.

I'm a facade.

A barely passable 

version of a human.

Just

   a writhing

   mass 

      of flesh and bone 

      with pain 

      boiling just underneath.

Just so I can exist

as just another face.

Contorting and stretching 

my skin 

so I can pass the day 

without having 

to answer 

the questions.

   Without having 

   to show 

      that I have run out of patience.

All the movements and charades

   Just so no one 

   can know 

   that I can't heal the hurt that I have endured.

-Armando Torres

You're Not Alone

"You're Not Alone" The candle flickers from across the room. The shadows it casts dance over one another as the coolness of the night settles in and that's when you begin to feel it, Even though there seems to be nothing but a lonely dark room. Lifeless of anything or any kind of movement. Just the dark reminders that creep up and over your eyes leaving the bloodshot stains of memory and pain hanging like dark bags. It's here where I see you, its here creeping up and over your shoulders from behind with my eyes that I peer into what you show without you knowing. You sit there alone because you think I'm not there but regardless of what you believe I can still see you; as I hover over your shoulders. I see you and what you do. I see your secrets kept from people, kept from everyone and everything. So don't ever forget that when alone feels just enough where you think no one knows, I do. I know. Because I can always see you. I find your hollow existence among the existential fabrics of depravity and watch you. I feel the grooves of your emptiness and glide my fingers over reality until I touch the ends of who you are. Sensing the very tips of your sanity. Just know, you are somewhere even if alone feels so alone. Don't. Because I know. I always know.

-Armando Torres

Who Am I Feeling?

"Who Am I Feeling?" Where do all those moments go once the stream of seconds have moved on, once time has left this point behind and continued on to a new one? They say time heals all wounds, they all say it'll get better with time; But Where do my feelings go Once time has erased the moments, Once memory has dissolved into the ether of reality? A cyclical motion of energy perhaps but where does this emotion go? A transference perhaps but then who is feeling my hurt now? Who's heart break am I feeling? Were these emotions ever mine? Were they ever real to begin with?

-Armando Torres

a sense of self

"a sense of self" There, just beyond the dismal glow of the computer screen one can lose a sense of identity when lingering inside misery for too long. Wandering its endless corridors, Exploring deeper than the time before. Eventually blurring the lines and feeling like this was home the entire time. One becomes misery and accepts it as a part of their identity not realizing it is but a parasite and we its host. Lingering on the fringes of light we tend to look out into the abyss letting the darkness transform for us and become the tortuous images we see about ourselves. The frail false walls of identity crumble in time as the cracks let in the drippy existence of what could have been. There, just beyond the dismal glow of the computer screen we should dare not look, because there is where the ocular point of misery stares back

-Armando Torres

it's all just a moment

"it's all just a moment" Looking back over the course of my time I find I could only ever have existed for a moment, barely a life, but never for more than a moment. None of us have been here for longer than a brief instant. We, who think time moves alongside with us have never existed longer than an insignificant blip. The relative motion of it, the seemingly endless movement of it, the grandness of time, all of it, just for it all to be a moment when it all existed. just a moment. And none of it would have ever existed if that moment never existed at all.

-Armando Torres

Just a Minute

"Just a Minute" It's never just a minute, is it? Here I am again waiting, drinking this beer alone below the dark glow of this bar room. I don't know why I keep doing this. This minute of yours has become an hour and your texts have stopped coming in. A simple reply that you forgot or that you couldn't tonight would suffice. But being left here alone looking around watching others have their laughs and convos while hoping you wanted to see me is worse than just drinking alone hoping for a conversation to appear beside me. Feels strange telling the same stories I used to share with you but to new faces. Some times they change into you and old feelings begin to burn through my veins again. That's when I usually leave, telling them it'll be just a minute But I don't come back. Alas, here I am still waiting for you to arrive soon even though I know you won't. As soon as you said it would be just a minute I knew already, But I'll have one more drink and maybe, just maybe, you'll finally be here and see me.

-Armando Torres

Wherefore

"Wherefore" Its in the darkness when it comes to visit, slithering its whispers around the night sounds, prowling among the black on the fringes of sight. The tiny hum of street lamps from outside reaches my ears as I sit and listen and wait to hear the whispers again. My eyes hang heavy deep inside my head painted with round dark rings. I can no longer see in this darkness. I'm bathed in it. It has washed all over me. The dreary midnight breeze from my opened window glides past my face and with it hanging on the edges of its air, the whispers come. I sit calmly and without worry staring forward from my heavy chair, arms hung over and head hung forward and eyes ahead. Nothing moves inside this night nothing except the spattered beauty of dripping red lines. Slowly painting a trail of absolution rolling downward unto the floor. The whispers talk amongst the shadows inside the room and outside among the trees beyond my window the glowing eyes peer in to look in at me. There's nothing for me. All I have left is this wall of defiant beauty and the body that painted it for me.

-Armando Torres

a familiar goodbye

"a familiar goodbye"

There's a saturated cry

to the false void of silence

I want to release 

   and these walls taunt me 

   with their poise 

of immovable stillness 

   to the broken display 

   I am performing before them.

A slobbering ache of pain 

and anguish 

seeping through 

my ethereal body 

releasing

as a fifth sense of some kind,

dissapating 

into the ether

leaving me,

   finally realizing 

      I am just 

      a kind of vessel 

      for 

ancient cosmic beings

      beyond the here and now.

A familiar sensaton.

A call to the void.

   

We are just sprinkles 

Of existentialism 

   for greater gods 

   trying to find 

their place of purpose, 

   their sense of emotions 

   beyond the insignificance  of time.

It leaves me 

feeling

alone with my realization.

Perhaps 

   even a discovery.

Leaves me alone

   having discovered a glimpse 

of existential dread 

and wanting to dissolve 

into the liquid of reality 

leaving me 

with a sense of urge 

pulling me through 

the window.

   Leaving me

   and my sense of being.

Leaving the residue

of the observed

only for it 

to dissolve away

among the million

and many more milions

   of experiences of life and reality.

Leaving...

Something I want to follow

from where I am sitting 

to where 

I could crash through

the window 

and fall below 

in the most visceral display 

of defiance my body could allow, 

   in the most truthful way I could paint.

I have lost my senese of identity 

and want to reclaim it.

  But only can

in losing it first.

I want to display something beyond 

what normality has for this body, 

   Something that is beyond

   what it can and cannot be.

Therefore,

A sense of urge is pulling me 

through the window again,

   something I want to follow 

   from 

   where I'm sitting 

   to where I could crash through 

and fall below 

in the most visceral display 

    of defiance my body can paint.

A familiar sensation.

A call to the void.

   Not at all empty.

   And not all 

   from nothing.

-Armando Torres