sprinkled words

my chest a throbbing cavity

evasive of the webs you weave

with strong hands veined artistically

as though it were your destiny

There is freedom to be found in explosive good byes with foundations crumbled, wreckage strewn across floors, anguish crunching at my feet, melodic to my spine.

There is pleasure in that pain. the artistry, the theatrics.  a farewell can linger, maim even, but it is still a comfort, when all is said and done.

For there is nothing worse than the unfinished. a dangling question mark, mocking in its simplicity, impenetrable in its stance. there is no forgetting. no moving on.

I was always one to explore abandoned buildings, rabbit holes, and the gaps between my fingertips. Infinitely mesmerized by empty spaces, geographical distances, and heavy silences.

My infatuated musings aim to fill the absence. Pouring sugar into every crevice, marveling how it takes shape like liquid, yet remains gritty like my thoughts.

but I live by the sea now and wear floaty long dresses with flowery prints

you’ve never seen me, but I can run pretty fast or stand perfectly still, depending who’s watching 

you’ve never heard my voice, cursing up a frenzy, when I chop the tomatoes wrong,  squishing them to a spatter

you haven’t yet met me with all my frays and loose ends, with my loud snorty laughs and wide-eyed intensity

and

I still don’t know you, with all your quiet wisdom and subtle assurances. 

it’s in all the ways I say nothing and do nothing, when I’m trying not to be selfish, when my mere presence feels overwhelming, imposing, a chore.

keep your cool

when the words he strings together fall into your lap like missing pieces from an unfinished puzzle you forgot you started

joke about it

when his attention cradles you in a warmth so intense, it sprouts  an affection that consumes  your whole being

find distance

when his silence torments you like a moving shadow on the wall seconds before you close your eyes to go to sleep

hide

it's the emotional nudity of it all. a direct line, an incision, a jolt, it's an electric pump filling your core with an air that makes you float a mere mortal seconds ago, with unwashed dishes and a set of errands to run, you swell from the warmth, rise above the ground, soar toward the skies, like a God. your eyes water from the tickling sensation inside. how long until you're out of oxygen?

how long until you burst and fall to the ground?

there is danger in numbers days passed, months spent in suppression. fears accumulated. too many to count

the odds were always against us, my darling

yet we remain, piling chips onto a table of dreams, tame and tender, soft yet precise. darting glances over card tricks, baiting breath  with lovely surrender.

You have to turn away then. In rapid, robotic movements, your chest clenched so tight you can barely breathe. Because the truth is still there. Buried beneath the rubble, behind the wall, beyond the denial, nestled up to your heart like a kitten, softly purring as it claws you with warmth. Then you throw up the meal that isn't there because the hollowness transcends everything.

Until it subsides in one way or another.

Until it is lulled again and reality seems possible and, yes, of course, you're doing the right thing. You are doing the right thing.

like grief, it comes in stages. sneaks up on morning walks where my phone rests in my pocket, no longer a portal, but a  boring device. no apps for escapism, none to take me back to the spring-time haze,  where the world broke down while we soared above, oblivious. the dreariest of butterflies, knowing only the beauty of their own wings, the flight. speaking an eternal language when, in fact,  we were so very mortal, so very fragile, easily destroyed by nature itself.

I mourn the loss of wings almost as much as the eternity that should have been ours had it not been impossible, improbable, pure lunacy, in fact.

Erase the voice that rings in my temples nervous and laughing with pauses that promise more than can ever be said.

Clear my memory of the chat window font, so his words don't appear on the backs of my eyelids when I'm trying to sleep.

Shrink my heart back to what it was before. A mere organ - small and regular, ticking normality. Not this weighted butterfly bomb, aflutter with longing, desperation, regret.

Allow me the freedom to exist in his orbit, without plotting murder against anyone he talks to, cares about, loves.

not in the way only a loved woman can touch a man. Soft as silk, firm as a grip on a life raft.

I cannot hear your voice in all its varieties, cursing the coffee machine first thing in the morning, or whispering good night into the spot of neck behind my ear.

there is a sadness between us, like a mothball left in a shirt pocket slowly oozing poison throughout the day.

our ghosts dance in limbo, filling theaters with our act. the lines get harder to recite on this, our eighty-fifth showing. reviewers will be disappointed. poor delivery, they'll say.

insincere.

when all I really want to do is burn the stage, blow up the theater, end the waking dream that is both tender, and caring, and all-knowing, but is also abundant with missed signs, greedy thoughts, and sickening truths.

The days slow to a crawl as the distance turns tangible, like a hedgehog in the room - prickly and timid.

The same sun that caresses your skin, hides behind clouds, heavy and dreary, for me.