I have words behind my tongue, scratching the back of my throat, that I can neither swallow nor blurt out, from fear someone might choke. My heart is so kind, I can almost let you live. If it weren't for those nights, I felt my hands around your neck.
Fingerprints of a childish hand on every doorknob. We're intertwined like the hairs of a tight braid. We need to be washed out of our shape, that's what we need. To cure us both.
If compared to death, I'd say my loss had no grave. My loss doesn't feel like one to fate, it birthed a grotesque and ugly sadness, produces vomit and bone screeching anger. My loss was to grieve for in secret. It was undefinable and complex. It morphed, grew and matured with me like a faithful friend. It took all forms and shapes.
I'd say at first my loss was milder than death, but it never ended and for years I kept losing, and the pain only grew more piercing it was much worse than burying a man. It was living with the ghost it was talking to a corpse it was never reconciling with the thought, that I was fatherless. Because of those cursed weekly meetings where I had to kiss the cheeks of the man I despised with all I was and still am. It was to hate a man as a child, as a daughter and as a woman. It was to wish harm and ruin on my blood, then take it back. It was to sit in the backseat drying my tears, it was feeling the anguish in my throat, choking me when I tried to speak, it was the anxiety that shook my body when he spoke. It was my heart breaking again and again. It wasn't only sorrow, it was soul crushingly heavy, like my spine could yield at any moment. But it never did, and I still carry the burden, and it feels like my body is growing accustomed to the weight, building itself around it, letting it shape it, define it, leave its print all over it.
Is it cruel to envy closure of the tomb. Wishing I had buried my sorrow deep into the earth's soil. Father, if you read this would you disown me. What would it even mean. My heart couldn't wish your death, it's too late for that. Death would simply be the end of hope, brutal and abrupt, "my father died and everything is worse now". And out of spite, I hold back the words that could cut the branch from which you're hanging. If I am choking you will too, if I am sleepless you'll be too. So we're both hunted, and it's almost like "which one of us died and which one of us is grieving ?".
