I always thought I was waiting for someone to tell me to stay, but cramped into the front seat of your car with my bruised lips swollen from your kisses and the breathless weight of early love heavy in your eyes, you asked me not to go and I still left.
There was something delicate underneath her rib cage that I felt only I could see and it made me ache with a pain I wished I could take from her. I wanted to run my fingers through her hair and kiss the loneliness away from the corners of her eyes, and I wanted to take her and show her that moments could be tender and cherished for their own sake even when the bigger picture was nothing but bleak.
sometimes the secrets I want to tell are not mine to tell and I need to remind myself that not everything was meant to be put down on paper where it would show up black and white.
Because I am not allowed to have words or thoughts or feelings I take the edges that chafe the stillness and buff them down until they are shiny and smooth. I fold the corners and tuck in the edges and keep my head down my mouth shut just nod and say okay through gritted teeth because none of my words or thoughts or feelings have any basis in validity so I will breathe slower and shallower and try even harder to do more than you ask of me so that maybe one day your first reaction at the sight of me won’t be to yell about what I’ve done wrong.
I was put together by an absent minded sculptor, who braided wind into my hair and left a bit of sea water in my eyes. He forgot to wipe the dust from my cheeks and left road maps and restlessness in my toes. He carved my skin thin and forgot to add shame to the mixture. When he breathed life into my lungs he forgot to close the gate behind the last thing he was doing, and wild horses ran through my heart.
I wanted to write to you to tell you about days gone by, little moments you would have laughed at. You should have seen the way the river burst its banks and drowned out all its sound. You would have laughed at the way the salmon leaped past us as we struggled our way upstream and you would have loved the way the water collected in dark pools of secret peace.
I would have let you know that I don’t always miss you anymore, and that the hollow part of me that you used to reside in doesn’t hurt that much these days, and mostly, I can breathe a little freer and know that at least once, I knew what it was like to love and be loved.
I’ve been working a lot. Living a lot. Trying to keep myself out of my head because it’s not always pleasant in there. Putting one foot in front of the other, leftrightleft in a brave if faltering rhythm.
but the thing is, I loved you
and I love you
and I will keep loving you
until all that is left of you are the blurred and finger-worn edges of a memory that sits vaguely blue and smelling of stale cigarettes in the back of my mind.
