Love Poem: Benzo
Ryan Robby Avatar
Written by: Ryan Robby

Benzo

Let’s be honest, I’m not that honest.
Be honest, 
Just this once.
Forget all the dilutions of grandeur,
The noise.
Eat it so hard in the teeth that your mouth has a voice.
Unclench your tongue just long enough to choke on your words…
Then swallow your words,

They were never your word.
 

Just like it was never a case of, “she isn’t the other half of me”. Rational thoughts of that nature that tried to tie emotion to logic were as implausible as the idea that I had any idea in the first place. 
It’s a philosophy contingent on empirically knowing that even the most limited of vocabularies can stutter words, reliant on misspelled synonyms that do more justice to a mind clumsy-drunk on love than any perfectionists wet dream of punctuation ever would.
It’s supposed to be messy.
Nights of trying to read the label on prescriptions through empty bottles gave self-induced illiteracy a formal introduction to Benzodiazepines.
See, attempts at dreams of you leave me isolated with feelings of resentment and distain in times of consciousness for nothing more than a lack of sleep. 
Insomnia, 
A new form of self-deprivation,
A therapy of sorts. 
Wearing my “oh so apparent” membership card of bloodshot eyes and shaky hands with pride I’ve developed pipe dreams of time spent with the pillow in a utopia of…you.
I called you Benzo. 
The irony is, the only provocation of panic that can get my mind racing fast enough to keep stride with the heart palpitations induced by you saying some other guy’s name is when you say mine. 
The type of sickness I only experience when my mind decides to throw out the jury. 
Anti-climactic, like her not being home when you knock on the door ready to recite a speech you wrote to explain how words aren’t enough anymore. 
Standing there pledging allegiance to silence because the color of words has and always will be too dull to complete our portrait of perfection. 
You keep your smiles guarded, with reason. All the more reason that I know I earned every last one, and the last one I got made me realize sometimes you got to burn it to the ground at a moment’s notice. 

A flat line to a punch line, silence drowned out the noise…