Full Snow Moon over Ely Cathedral

• Every soft thing i ever wanted to tell you, I swallowed, clamped down on my tongue, shoved it down my throat until it filled my mouth with blood.

• I downplay every feeling, every connection, anything of substance, because if I don't, life might just rip it from my hands.  

• I let it go, let it slip through my fingers like sand, because the harder I clutch, the faster it leaves.  

• I teach myself to loosen my grip, teach myself to believe you were never mine to begin with.  

• Trapped, suffocating, trembling, with desire, i teach myself not to let it mean anything, because what if it could mean everything? And then, what if it doesn't?

• I scream and scream and scream, but my body is a soundproof box; I am shaking, trembling, screaming so loud my ribcage rattles, but no noise escapes my lips.  

• If you peeled the skin from my body, you would see: every inch of me is a wanting so pervasive it has devoured everything else.

• You would find a hunger so ravenous it carved itself into my bones, threaded itself through every vein it could find.  

• I see too much. I hear too much. I feel too much. I am too much. My body aches from carrying all the things I never said out loud.  

• You cannot ruin something that isn't there, so i leave first, telling myself it will hurt less this way.

— Rushda