Poetic Paragraphs

Loss

Expectation laces the air, thrumming in my ears, singing in my bones, and I almost want to berate myself for expecting the impossible.

It's not going to happen, I whisper in my mind, and I'm right.

Of course I'm right.

It won't make up for the fallout, for the withdrawal, when hope gives out from beneath my feet and leaves me tumbling midair with nothing to hold onto.

I don't know yet. I haven't lost yet.

I shouldn't keep telling myself that.

I shouldn't keep reassuring myself that one day, someday, I'll be good enough to win. Not at this, not at anything.

Because the world is filled with people who are better, who have tried harder, who have more to lose than just a paper castle of self-confidence that falls at the lightest breeze.

I know this, and I still hope.

The breath is soft and slow in my throat, in my lungs, as if I could stop the world for just a moment with my breathing.

Like I can preserve the universe like a half-unfurled rose before it rots, because once I click, the fantasy is over.

The hope is dead.

But now, just for this moment, expectation runs through my bloodstream, pumped out from my heart, and hope brims over in my chest until I can almost feel it  seeping from my body.

Somewhere in myself, I already knew I lost.

But I still let myself hope. Maybe because I'm a fool. Maybe because it's better than nothing. Maybe because I love the feeling of floating enough to bear the scratches and scrapes that comes with the fall. 

And then I click, the screen changes to the competition results, and I see nothing and everything.

For a moment, reality is suspended in the moment, hope still lingering in the air, and I have the surreal experience of watching it die before my eyes.

It's a strange thing, hope. I guess it's beautiful in a way, all silver and shiny, but all that glimmers is not gold.

I didn't know that. (Now I do.) I took it into my heart, held it there, let it buoy me and carry my doubts for a while. (Now I know I shouldn't have.)

I'd buried it deep in my heart.

(I hadn't know better, but I had. I should've known better, but I did, and I did it anyway.)

And now I will live with regret because the failure staring back at me grows on top of that hope, tarnishing it, and all that's left of my shimmering silver wishes is a pile of bitter rust.

It poisons my bloodstream, running failure through my veins, into my brain, circulating with my thoughts.

I'm not enough, still not enough, for all I've tried and all I've failed.

The half-unfurled rose is consumed by rot, my heart withering, the bitterness spreading, and I am suddenly very, very cold.

Like I'm trying to freeze out my thoughts, freeze out my feelings, let me look at the situation without the bitterness or the poison or the carcass of my hope still held in my outstretched arms.

Like I can freeze the rot on the rose, the bitterness in my bloodstream, the world on its axis.

Because even though I lost, someone else won.

Someone else is out there behind a computer screen, face filled with happiness and accomplishment. And failure lingers far from their success-dipped fingertips, their persistence-coated words, and for them, for that moment, they are enough.

Because they have succeeded, and they are happy.

And while the frost coats my heart and my rose and my world, I can find the heart to congratulate them.

I find the soul to give them praise.

I find the peace of mind to read their work and admire its beauty, its wonder, and somewhere inside, everything begins to thaw.

Because I understand, and I know I didn't deserve that win, not here, not now.

But that doesn't mean not ever.

And even though the bitterness will not clear from my bloodstream, rot recede from the rose, it will be okay with time.

My body will find its homeostasis.

The rose will grow out and bloom again.

The phoenix will rise from the ashes, from the rust, and I will be okay.

It just takes a little bit of time.