Catharsis (On "Mood Swings")

I can be two different people

In the span of an hour.

One of them is who I want to be all the time,

happy, confident, happy, content. This guy

has everything. A family who loves him, friends

he can talk to, a beautiful girlfriend,

captured and swept along by the music and words that surround him,

which he tries to chain to his fingers and mouth

and share with the world, never empty

of people and places that inspire him.

This guy is around most of the time.

 

When he's not, though, it feels like he will never come back.

Like he threw around my mind like a fucking tornado, tore up

all things beautiful, and then was chased away by the 

goddamn tears that just won't stop trying to

salt the earth of my fucked up head.

 

This guy appears without warning. He comes at the ever

so slightest invitation,—sometimes never being invited at all—

like a friend who didn't wave back, a white lie, a lover out of town,

an innocent sentence taken and mangled, driving alone for far too long

at night until the traffic lights become mere suggestions,

and the songs turn to white noise and the white noise is tapped out on my

fingers and feet and the three beers I had weigh my stomach down like a brick and 

I feel like throwing up and I wonder always what it would be like if I just shut my eyes tight and

pressed down hard on the gas pedal and didn't go home and stopped wasting away, unable to feel anything anymore.

 

But I always go home. 

And I never say anything—ever—because the guy

I want to be always come back, and this time,

I hope against hope that he stays forever.