syreling

Shame comes in. I can feel my own skin, loosed from the velvet confines of the previous night. I can feel the bareness of my body, my soul. I have crafted this creature of myself with reckless, bleeding abandon - with a joy I am now ashamed to have once held because now she can see it. She can see my aching want, the truths of myself I have never tried to hide but nevertheless cover up.

Once a year, Mama sees me. That creature she birthed all those years ago that feel like yesterday. She sees me as I’ve become, as I’ve grown beyond the black dog scratching at her bedroom door.

Once a year, dawn comes through my mother’s bedroom window and I am a man again.

What could trouble me here? In this sanctuary? In my mother’s heaven?

I am just a pup again, nodding off to sleep in the orange glow of my mother’s heart.

Once a year, my mama lays me down to rest on her bed, at her feet, in her home. She makes space for me, curling her knees close to her chest. She quiets my crying and pats my head in long, smooth strokes.

My mama’s heartbeat echoes in my ears - thumpthump, thumpthump - and I feel the resounding echo of it in the caverns of my chest. I answer her, beat for beat, pulse to pulse. I call and whine and cry, I beg my mama for all she can give me - which is nothing, but I beg all the same.

Once a year, my mama scoops me up in her arms despite my weight. I’m a big dog, a drooling, hefty mass of muscle and teeth and fearful anger, but she picks me up all the same and I feel all the lighter for it.

Once a year, my mama wonders how I got in her house with all its locked doors and bolted windows. With my paws and gnashing teeth. She never minds the gashing claw marks in the paint of her bedroom door. Mama never minds my desperation.

I’m a pitiful little thing, a black dog with a broken leg, whimpering for his mama to take him out back and put him out of his misery.

every night i come home and im faced with the knowledge that i'll probably always be alone

For all the shit she gave them, Jepsen has never once given up on her. They stayed, they talked, and they tried to be there when no one else would. They tried to be there for her even when she pushed everyone away, even when they knew in their heart that she didn’t love them and never would. Jepsen only hoped that she would have the guts to tell them to their face this time. They wanted her to admit, for fucking once, that she caused this. That she was the reason she was alone - not because she was lacking in love or support, but because she chose to be.

Jepsen has only ever wanted the people they love to stay by their side. They want someone’s hand to hold, someone to be there and say that everything’s okay. They want to stop crying over a woman that will never, ever love them. They want to stop grieving a woman that will never sit still. They want to stop loving the woman that will always leave them.