Waves

I can go days without thinking of the things that broke me.
Smiles come easy and the moments linger long and slow and sweet like honey on my lips.
The sun comes up, and I have this feeling that it's shining just for me, just to show me the world.\
Laughter bubbles up from some place within me, unbidden and easy and free.
It's a place I wish that I could stay in.

In seconds, it comes crashing down.
One word, one face, one thought, and it all falls apart like a card house blown to bits.
The memories suffocate me and settle in my lungs; tar, sticking to everything and blocking out the air.
The world falls away like ash scattered in a breeze and all I can see is the blur of unshed tears.
I refuse to cry there, anywhere.
I refuse to cry at all.
The losses form a lump in my throat until swallowing feels suspiciously like sobbing and breathing is too close to gasping for life.
I hold it down, try to drown it in the latent anger that died out long ago.
Instead, I throw pain into the all consuming grief and the feeling grows, swelling in my chest until I have to close my eyes to keep the waves inside.
I fall for days at a time, stuck beneath a tide of loss that I can't find my way out of.
I simply have to float until the waves slow down and the water recedes, leaving me heaving on a desolate, numb strip of reality.

Highway Highs

I drove down the highway laughing today.
I turned the radio up and rolled my window down until it felt like my body was soaring the same way my soul was.
As the wind blew in, the tension in my chest blew out and I could finally breathe again.
It was like the world was laughing with me, the very essence of nature echoing the joy in my very bones.
I could've driven off like that into the sunset and never looked back.
I would have if my roots here weren't so deep.
I still might one day, when there's no one waiting for me at home and there's no responsibility beckoning me back.
The feeling followed me inside, even after the wind was gone and the music had stopped.
It swirls within my heart now, light, bursting with energy and enthusiasm.
I feel like a little girl, reckless and free in the brightest and most honest sense, spinning in glittering rays of sunshine and full of the innocent, naive hope that the sun will never go down.