There's A Party Next Door

There's A Party Next Door

There's a party next door.

You've never been to a party before,
not like the one next door

Through tinted, foggy glass under shadow,
You see partygoers dancing,
Cheering
Laughing
Loving

At first it was scandal
At first it was sacrilege
At first you wanted absolutely nothing to do with it

But you kept watching the partygoers
As they danced and cheered and laughed and loved
And you realized
The hole inside you,
Deep and dark and clawing and maddening,
That had dull aches and sharp pangs,
Or nothing at all,
Was shaped like a party

There's a party next door,
And you could reach it if you just got through your own door

The door is held wide shut for you,
Bound in gold calligraphy with a sea-salt stench
Surrounded by a million kilopascals of pressure
Guarded by billions of ravenous eels
It was nauseating to think about
And damning to even approach
The thin scars on your arm won't let you forget that

At sunset, while you were on your knees,
When your head was foggy and
bowed, hands atop your legs,
You could not stop thinking of
Allahu Akbar, rising to your feet,
And He heard you cry walking out to the streets

And sometimes partygoers came to your foggy glass,
Slicked with sweat and love filling their red cheeks,
A glint in their eyes you lost when you were 14
And they told you you'd come to the party soon,
Through vapid giggles as they hugged one another in drunken love
Drunk on love, drunk in love,
A kind of drunk you'll never become

There's a party next door and you aren't invited,
You can already hear sirens coming down the street.