The Art of Being Okay

Your moods roll in like sudden storms. I always feel like I’m forgetting to check the forecast. You are thunder without warning. A monsoon in the desert. A squall out at sea.

Collecting apologies shaped like hail. Hard, cold, melting too quickly to hold.

You say the damage is imagined. That the cracks in the ceiling are tricks of the light. So I’ve learned to doubt gravity.

You tell me I am the wind that rattles your frame. That I am the reason doors slam shut. That my silence is a provocation, and my voice an offense.

And like a mirror left in the rain, my edges begin to blur. No longer sure which reflection is mine.

Your moods are a tide, that swears the shore has moved spots. You redraw the map each night, and tell me I’ve always lived underwater. That breathing air was a story I invented. So I practice drowning politely.

Even love has become a language spoken in riddles. Each sentence a locked door, each key made of smoke.
You hand them to me and say “See? They fit.” While I remain locked out and choke on the air I’ve inhaled.

And still, somewhere beneath the noise, I remember the house before the weather. Before the walls learned to flinch, before I carried an umbrella indoors.

I told myself to stay open, stay kind. There must be a reason for the way you broke things without looking back. Your mind wasn’t yours after being taken by the spirits.

But something quiet has been leaving me. Not all at once. Empathy doesn’t shatter, it erodes. A shoreline worn thin by the same tide returning each day with no apology.

I remember when I could reach for you and feel warmth, a reflex of understanding. Muscle memory for forgiveness. Now when I try, there’s only distance.

It’s not anger that’s taken its place. That would at least be alive. This feeling is empty. Numb. The slow realization that I should not want to understand you any longer.

I used to wonder how you could hurt me and keep going. Now I know you just stop feeling for the person you had to become to let it happen.