I feel hurt and dishonest, and as if no one was here, or ever even really was to begin with. I’m being pushed, shoved into these off-white cinderblock walls, and my voice is suffocating through the smoke being blown into my face. I can’t speak, and my heart races up to my mouth when I try to defend myself.
Though my strides are longer and my patience more withering, I’m always the one left behind. My ears, the ones that remember his low voice at night, they’re killing and alienating me. The rambles are the product of twentyhour days, and the images that make up my mind throughout these hours are the ones of the people I miss the most—the tiny moments, the tiny people I never appreciated, the tiny details that stuck to me: The little things about life that, even as I walk briskly past them, I somehow manage to pick up; the slant of light over the northern lake, the way he tilts his head when he’s smoking a cigarette, looking at me.
The tone of her voice when she says she won’t wait for me, the nod from across the room, the glance back at me and the turn away from me, the difference of the way his shoulder blades moved when he walked away compared to when he came up to me… the extra breath taken in between words. All of these are things that hurt me; things that numb me and things that make me want to run away. They’re things I can’t explain, things I think of when I’m ready to leave. I’ve evolved into this person from this place and I’m ready to leave.
The heat of my mind is wearing off now, and I can’t smell the smoke anymore, and the depth is now becoming shallow, so now, in the middle of a thought, it’s time to just wait here. To just lie down in this cold and think of what I have so close to me and think of what I need to change. Change is what I need. Want. Should have. “I agree we should.” Those words aren’t changing the more I think about them, but I can’t push them away because they have so many different meanings, and they could be polar opposite meanings. Time’s not over, and it is what it is.
We’ll never live like this again. In this moment, right now, the shadows of the light in the corner, the diluted yellow and whistling from the window. This new feeling of him coming back and then walking away, and now inching forward again. This will never be the same. These feelings will fade, and this in-between atmosphere will come every year, but it’s never the same.
I became restless after months of being in the same place, and so I silently went away. The physical pain overcame my eyesight, and I couldn’t see ahead of me anymore. I couldn’t walk to the door, I couldn’t tell what I really wanted and what I wanted merely because it was different. I packed a small bag and I left as soon as possible to push this pain away. The drive went by quickly, with my terrible Irish coffee in hand, soon left unfinished, and I couldn’t sleep but I stared out at the road. I watched the progression of snow turning into grass for eight hours. I pretended to sleep. I felt a kink in the back of my neck, and my lower back, my legs, I couldn’t feel anything after a while. So I closed my eyes with my earplugs in, suffocating the noises from outside, and I thought. Mostly about what it would feel like again to be able to walk without a limp, without my right ribcage hurting. To sleep without having the painkillers tearing my stomach ruthlessly apart. To sit in one place without the muscles screaming, to write without my hands cramping, to feel the heat and cold of the water in a shower. To feel something besides the pain that took up my mind.
We’re too young for this. Too young to be broken down when we’re still growing. It will only stunt our growth, keep us from being who we could have been. Too young to have this pain, the chronic sparks of fire through my legs and my head and my spine, the lack of feeling, I’m too young to not feel this. And too young to feel it.
I wake up with the glare of early light across my face from the opposite window. I’m surrounded by white sheets that aren’t mine, and they make my skin itch. My arms are red and my neck hurts. The sun is barely up, and I move around boxes to get to the second door in the corner of the room, my feet against the soft and stillrisen carpet down the stairs, and I sneak out the side door. It’s still unusually warm and I drive an hour in traffic to wait in a room. I wait for answers to my questions, why my ears effect my brain so much, why they effect my blood and my heart. Why they make me so uneasy and hurt. He gives me drugs and warns me against them, and I nod and I wonder what it’s like to live in a place like this for so long.
He has the energy I lack and I have the ground he needs.
I could feel the hardened paint against my skull. We went for a drive around this strange place, and we saw the sky like never before, and we came back home, stood in your doorway, waiting to see you again. The past won't rest, you say, and you're too afraid as I push my shoulders against the wall, close my eyes, taking it in, the deepest breaths I've ever drowned in. I remember your head back, your neck stretched and the way your mouth was parted slightly, your eyes are so small. I don't know why I'm here and there's not much else to change, but my mind is tired and you're always turning away.
I can walk away from the bottom of my heart, let it lift me up and take me an ocean away, but I'd never hear the end of it, the way I gave up again. So all I can do is look back and make sure you're still here, still uncertain, still wavering, but you're here, repeating everything I once said.
The past catches up to you, they say, with my dangling feet almost but not really touching the water underneath, the sun slowly falling (but I never noticed that part of the day). Splinters dug deep like the hurt words I hear today, but they aren't always the same and they aren't always like I remember it. But I know the sand like the back of my hand just like they say in those films, but that was before I ever even held a camera. I can still feel the cut off shorts I wore and the cool rush of the air through the screens in the early morning, the freshest part of the day. I didn't think about how anyone would harm me or how many people I wanted to love, or how many shoes I wanted to see or the places I wanted to be. I didn't notice the clanking of the dishes but it's a rhythm that I can't live without; I never noticed that pitter patter on the roof when the summer storms came along, but now it's a trademark in reliving the memories. The way the blinds made shadows across the wall never caught my eye, but I can imagine it now, so clear right before I went out to the water waiting to muster up the energy to jump, my feet dangling, not touching the water, but now I wish they did.
I came across elements of you in the dust around my bed, the pieces locked away, your signature on a photocopy. I can’t get rid of you, a rigid piece uprooting itself once I think you’re fading. a. your warmth is still against my body, b. your voice echos in my mind, the sound from the hallway, non stop, c. the way your arm curled as you slept, d. your face when you woke, e. the tilt of your head as you asked me questions, prying wondering curious dying to know if I meant it, any of it. I did. I didn’t say it. But I want you to know, no matter where we are right now (you down the street walking away, as I’m killing my stomach to let you go), I want you to always know I always meant it.
Stop looking back. Stop trying and thinking and for godssake, stop speaking. The words coming out of your mouth are crumbling, these people don’t know how you feel. I look away for a second, and I think about how much I want to go to sleep. The soft hum of the fan that you hated, I would love to indulge in that right now. You aren’t here to tell me to not think about it, or tell me to calm down. Your hurt that you disguise as anxiousness isn’t overcoming anymore, like waves swallowing me up and unable to move in your grasp. I can breathe and I can think alone and it’s a strange feeling because I loved you before I learned how to love myself. I’m trying not to look back but at the same time I’m trying to grasp who I am, and who I was before you, and I can’t. Is that part of me gone, have you really changed me that much in two years? I didn’t know it was possible to let yourself love someone that much, to the point where you lose your own sense of self and awareness. It never occured to me until now, when I’m lost here in the middle of the sand without you lying down next to me, your back burning in the sun. I don’t have you to look back to anymore, to ask you who I am because you knew me more than I knew myself, clearly.
I reread the words I write and I imagine myself as you reading them. I wonder what you would think, if you would think they were about you (they weren’t), and I wish that I had the courage to write about it. I wish I had something to say, but maybe it’s too soon. Maybe you’re still apart of me, or you make me feel sick, because we were more real. I think of how you would feel, but I can’t. I can’t imagine it because I honestly don’t think you ever will read anything of mine, and that makes me feel all right, if only I knew that for certain. I don’t want you to read any of it. I don’t want you to think I’m writing about you, or to think that you made such an impact on the way I live. You do, too much, and that’s the problem. I will never see you again, and I never thought that would happen, though in the back of my mind I really did. Every time I woke up with you or I fought with you, I reminded myself that this wouldn’t last so I might as well take it all in while I can. Appreciate you while you’re still mine. I knew you wouldn’t be there eventually, but it crept up too quickly, and I’m still frozen. You uninspire me because I can’t move. You don’t help my mind expand or allow me to discover something, even something about myself. You hinder me and you paralyze me and I can’t talk about you and I can’t write about you and it hurts my lungs and my legs to even think about you.
But you kept me grounded, you allowed me to lose the sense of dreaming and that was what I needed. I didn’t write for a year straight and I loved it. I was too happy to have anything to write about. I was too happy to force something, too caught up in living and learning about you and only you. I cut ties and I felt more free than I had in two years. I was occupied, no need for an outlet anymore. But now, with my legs crossed and my eyes dry and the taste in my mouth bitter, I hate it. I hate that I lost myself and that I can’t revisit moments without my stomach burning. I hate that you’re able to live well and be okay knowing that I’m not there. Your lack of expression and compassion stumps me and frustrates me and fills me with regret, because I thought I knew you better than that. I thought you knew me better than that. But I can’t imagine who you are anymore, and I can’t imagine that you’ll ever know or read or try. Two years went by without a word from me of any significance, and this is all I have to show for it; looking past you to find my mind again, as you left me uninspired. All I have are memories I can’t physically fathom and two years full of empty pages.