You leave, I am an abandoned house.
With splintered wood, and a floor that is caving in.
You leave, I am a dusty attic.
Filled with faded photographs and untouched cardboard boxes.
You leave, I am a car that doesn’t drive.
With rusting metal and flat tires.
You leave, but I am still here.
–S.
My heart seems to have only memorized the sweetest parts of our soul tie, but my mind knows better.
Although, you are the only person I will never stop looking for in a crowded place,
you are also the heaviest sadness I have ever known, the color blue so dark that it almost passes as black, pain so clear that I can only fall to my knees and succumb to its power, and the feeling of panic that mirrors having missed death by a mere breath.
–S.
My feet are glued to the tub. That’s what it feels like.
I can’t move. The liquid coming up and out of the drain turns from black to brown to brick to red, and it’s blood. The tub is filling. It climbs the sides of the tub and then runs over.
Everything is stained.
It’s alive.
Real.
Gritty.
Growing.
Changing.
Although I panic, I can’t help but touch it with my fingers. I feel it run through my fingers. It leaves a soft crimson behind.
And then I dip my arms in. I am covered in it.
When I can move my feet again, I lay down in the tub and submerge my entire face under and I come up for air like I’m taking my very first breath.
Blood.
Breath.
Gasping.
That’s what the truth finally coming to the surface feels like.
Like being born again.
–S.
I want you to know that I would do it all over again.
Every single moment, just to laugh with you again.
The joy. The pain.
The hate. The love.
The betrayal. The jealousy.
The disappointment. The lying.
The rainbow of emotions.
The shouting in the parking lot.
The drunken dirty whispers.
All to hear you laugh again.
To see you light up again.
To hear that small satisfied sigh before you smile again.
I would do it all.
Again.
Again.
Again.
With you.
Maybe I’m crazy,
but I never said that I was sane, baby.
–S.
Blue Valentine,
I’d never leave you if you were mine.
But you left me when I was yours.
Blue Valentine,
what happened to for better or for worse?
–S.
You want a girl who is soft and has lips that are cherry red.
You want a girl who smells like vanilla and leans into everything you say like a cat.
I am not a girl. I am a hurricane.
I am not soft. I am electric.
My lips are not cherry red. They are nude and rich like the earth.
I don’t smell like vanilla. I smell like a wildfire.
I am not a cat. I am a panther.
And I never lean or sway, I’m like a roller coaster that way.
–S.
As the light paints the sky with color,
I know now, that I can never love another.
Not like I loved you,
the winter to my summer,
the guitarist to my drummer,
maple and butter,
sweet lover.
–S.
Yearning for someone to hold me,
feeling underwater,
drowning in the lonely.
–S.
The Messy Middle 🖤 