It doesn't look like I thought it would -

after all of our dreaming of where we would go and who we would be. Talking all night with our faces toward the ceiling, listening to your neighbors make newfound love while swearing our souls were fire.

But the future came heavily and we found out the truth: like the snail and salmon we are born to die. We'll bury our grandparents, our parents, and eventually, ourselves. Entire bloodlines that no one will ever hear about and whose obituaries will line the bottom of bird cages.

Being alive was never art, it was the tick of the time clock in the warehouse or cleaning the same dishes that you've cleaned one hundred times and you'll clean one hundred times more.

We are no gods, we are thieves.

We steal fragile moments, hiding them in frames so that we have something tangible, a signpost that reminds us why we keep making ourselves do it again.

We sign mortgages, adopt pets, have children, ask our bosses for a raise, plan weekend getaways, and write in the dark but there is still no end to the fathomless depth of loneliness that we feel as someone sleeps next to us who we care for but do not love.

"Love", that bastardized word that has been viciously twisted to fit into boxes of assorted confections and whose truest expression is impossible for us to attain. We are jealous, we are possessive, we project our fears and our insecurities onto one another and instead of adding our support and staying afloat, drag one another down endlessly as we struggle.

It doesn't look like I thought it would.

It doesn't look like a lyric. It doesn't look like a sunset. It doesn't look like a stolen glance out of the corner of your emerald eye.

It looks like our aging hands, pressed together in contrition, begging for mercy and to one day pass on in our sleep.