think about killing yourself anymore, at least not in the real sense. Maybe you never even meant it, really meant it, because what you always pictured was your own funeral. A Tom Sawyer in your own right, you dreamed up all the adoring things people would say. Who'd cry the loudest and linger the longest after they'd left you in the dirt.
You wanted to be loved, but you didn't want to hurt. You didn't know how to ask the people in your life to love you now, in the present, while you're all still here. We spend so much time worrying about all the things that don't matter, and so little saying all the things that do.
But now you've got these boys who look up to you, and you're something of a father. They're pure in their affection. They tell you they love you with the same ease as breathing. You wonder when you stopped being that way too—what it was in the world that beat it out of you, and how you might find your way back. On hands and knees you sometimes pray, dear god, please let me find my way back.
a woman who wears white that never stains. I will sit on the small side of the mountain, hands to heart center, and breathe in the scent of green leaves against a gray sky. Behind the curtain of my eyelids I will see a darkness signaling only peace. A sense of endless time will take me as I record the sound of birds to my brain; I will heave a sigh to push the toxins out, rather than to let exhaustion in. Smell like I've never felt pain. I'd cleanse my aura by eating dirt if it would bury every bad thing I've ever done.
I sit high above the streets of Brooklyn, lazy gaze in the direction of places I've yet to touch. Thighs closed, so near the roof's brick edge it scrapes a white and spidered pattern along my legs. Wind whipping, shivering my skin as it goes. A million lives I can reach out and hold in the palm of my hand.
wants you to feel good. You're their guest, and they're just so pleased you're here. Come this way, let them show you around. The kitchen is small for their taste but the bathrooms are big. The art is all custom, a collection of painters they admire, the cat a foster they couldn't bear to part with. His office, with an undeniably masculine-though-not-unpleasant smell, complemented with dark wood and workout equipment he makes good use of. Her presence is smaller, slighter, like the shapes of her petite form through the oversized sweater that hangs off delicate shoulders. You feel both Too Small and Too Big standing between them, a fuckable form of Goldilocks let into their bedroom to be just right.
You are a special star with a crucial part to play: their toy to toss back and forth, good girl who can withstand so much more pain than the others. Your olive skin will look so lovely paired with plum bruises that bloom across the soft parts of your body. He likes to dole out punishment, where she charms with a sweeter touch. It doesn't matter anyway — you know the key to your obedience is the same one that unlocks your heart. You already gave that one away, to someone who was so much better at inflicting pain than he'll ever be. He can hit you as hard as he wants; real hurt laps at your heart when you watch her press her nose to his, eyes closed, a smile parting her lips while she whispers something for only him.
When it's done, he'll hold your head in his lap and gently stroke your hair while she makes you dumplings and peppermint tea. This is the pleasure you craved all along. It's so tired to be told come, when all you want to hear is come closer.
maybe we do too. Moments like lifetimes spent circling each other in a size-up melted down, anger and fear repurposed, to create two new creatures who play. See them run and tumble into one another, swept off their feet and then safely righted again as forms of joy.
How long has been spent picking at scabs and counting the hours? Tugging at the stitches to see who bleeds first, and with it a trickle growing into a tide of resentment. How can trust build under such hostile conditions?
But if we could. If we could stand still and face each other, hand to heart, heart to god. Eyes locked where blue meets brown like ocean and earth, two unstoppable forces that coexist with the barest of touch. No need to press the shared scars that faded so differently across our bodies, because we know that sometimes scars can be beautiful: the lovely ghost white of a heart just above your lip where you squared up with gravity. The battlefield written across my knees when falls became stories of getting back up.
If pain has left you tender, if pain has left you wise —
If you need to tread softly until the ground looks more even —
Let time be our judge and jury. I'll see you on the road somewhere we can collapse into laughter, stare at the stars, and tell each other: We were perfect, weren't we?
that letting go is a matter of time and distance. What I know of it is something else:
a series of tiny deaths
the elimination of a thousand futures and possibilities and dreams.
It is not just the first time you wake by yourself on a warm Sunday morning in the bed where he used to touch you, drink the coffee you got together, alone, in long silence
before you finally throw out the toothbrush he'll never use again, put away the pictures where you look so happy it hurts to see.
That is a process of archival. The removal of old artifacts you will either place in the museum of your relationship or donate to the dumpster.
To let go is to stand on the train that once delivered you straight to him
and ride it to a lonely destination.
The jokes and teasing made for just that one person, spoken aloud to no one.
Waiting in line at the cafe while his favorite drink jumps off the board (a flavor that made you gag, even then) and going home with a different order.
Of experiencing new joys and places and people, so deep and sweet you want to run to the phone and tell him all about it before remembering
the line disconnected a long time ago.
It is to breathe through every wave that hits you, even the ones that knock you over. Especially those.
There is no one act of letting go, but the practice of doing it again and again, day by day, until the aches subside. It is a task of vigilance, this process of killing these little feelings each time they sprout beneath your ribcage.
Nothing can truly bloom in the space he occupied. Letting go is depriving those persistent growths that twist free of water, air, and light. It is ripping out the pieces of him like weeds, even as your skin tears and bleeds
for as long as it takes
until the day your heart is ready to grow something new.
the boys at play, especially the ones that fare tall and strong. Their glass-cutter jaws and crooked noses molded into beautiful masculinity as they grin at friends and flip jokes at each other with ease, tumbled words and swallowed each other's thoughts. It delights you to watch that joy slide down their long throats, especially in the summer when they loosen up with tank tops and deep v's, lightly dampened fabric that betrays the delicate lines of collarbones you'd love to trace your finger over. Such vulnerability placed against the virtues of virility. The bone exposed, much like your own. It beckons to something tender within you that sleeps more often than not, engenders a sense of affection that softens them and attracts you.
Sometimes you would see one on the subway, solitary, head bowed over a book and you thought your heart might just burst from it: the furrow of a brow, a lip gently chewed, the slope of a back at ease. You were always alone back then. You dreamt of sliding next to them to take their hand in innocence, where together you might look upon the world and find it suddenly more beautiful.
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and the wet, full-throated nights of a summer half past. The sound of bike tires sailing down the pavement while the katydids sing. In my mind I walk through long fields of tall grass, feel mosquitoes bite at my ankles. Call me home and I'll come running, wherever you are.
lay you down on something soft wrap your body tight and warm hold your head with my kindest thoughts knit my fingers through your worries cradle your heart with the sound of my voice put you to sleep with the touch of my love sew together every crack every hurt every disappointment every "I can't" every "you can't" every time you have felt you were not enough and you were not made for this world.
