Prompt: Cold Coffee-White Leaves-Mints

Winter took hold fast while we slept.  Green leaves are wrapped in ice until they hang white on dead limbs of sleeping trees.
The cold coffee in my hand feels as out of place as I do waiting in front of the coffee shop for someone who might not bother to show.
A tin of mints rattles in my purse as I bounce on the balls of my feet trying to stay warm.
I can't stop the doubt swirling in my mind.  I shouldn't be here so early.  I shouldn't be here at all.
Across the street bundled in a black jacket with a red beanie, I see his bright green eyes smiling at me.  When a bus cuts between us I hold my breath, afraid I imagined him.  But traffic clears and he's still there, smiling at me and waiting for a safe second to dart across the road.
The chill of winter fades as my cheeks burn red.
He's early too.  Maybe I do belong somewhere, even if only for today and only in this coffee shop.  Maybe I belong by him.

Echoes

Everything I have now is an echo of the things I've had before.
An echo of the things that hurt me.

There is one with a sharp mind and a quick tongue and a chip on his shoulder bigger than his heart can handle.
There is one with a bright smile and an affinity for lying and hands made to stir the pot.
There is one with amber eyes the same color as the whiskey he drowns his demons in and soft, sad words that fall like poetry on my ears.

Everything I am now is an echo of what I've been before.
An echo of the different versions of me that have existed.

There is a bright and beautiful girl so full of hope and love and life that she glows when she smiles.
There is a ghost, a fragile thing so broken and scared and hurt that she craves only sleep to dull out the pain.
There is a warrior, wounded and bleeding but still standing on her feet, swinging blindly at anyone who gets too close, unaware that the war has been over for months.

I look in the mirror and the echoes ripple through me like ghosts all crowding into this one body, trying to fit together in one skin, all vying to occupy my mind.
I look around and the echoes of the people who broke me then and the people who scare me now glare back at me in every glassy window and every new face in every place I go.

I want to let them go; the echoes.  The ghosts.  The memories.
I want to walk out to the ocean where the waves are deep and strong and hold my head under the water until I come up new and clean and empty.
Empty of the pain and the thoughts and the nightmares.
Empty of the words I never said that clog my chest and sting my eyes and press against my lips.
But lungs full of water have no room for air.

Broken Streams

I stepped in a stream and I thought of you.
I had to pause and take a minute before I could go on because the feeling was so strong.
Because I am a stream, fast and constantly in motion, always changing, always new.
And you are the foot that stops my progress.
The shoe I have to split myself apart to accommodate and work around.
You don't seem to notice when you've stepped on my movement; the way I don't notice the stream until my foot is right in the middle, forcing the water to flow around me and go out of it's way.

I stepped in a stream and I thought of you.
Of how I was fine, how I let the current of time flow and take me somewhere new; how I let it make me someone new.
And then I thought of how you stepped in like it was nothing, like I was a stagnant pond just waiting for your direction.

I stepped in a stream and I thought of how over the last seven days it seems like an army has crossed my current, always stepping right in the middle like my life means nothing if their shoe isn't in the middle of it to get wet.

I stepped in a stream and I congratulated the water on it's continued motion, even when I was in the middle where I didn't belong, even when I made it harder for the water to run.  And when I was on the other side, I thought of all the people who have appeared in the middle of my progress, where they don't belong, where they made it hard for me to move, and I congratulated myself on my continued motion.  I congratulated myself on my healing, despite the way they keep stepping on me and tearing my scars open again.

I stepped in a stream and I thought how unfair it is for the world to keep trying to stop the water until I remembered that water is strong enough to carve a mountain in half and that after all this time, I myself am mostly water too.

Holding My Breath

Everyone has a different response to fear and mine is silly.

It's not really a solution, it's just an instinct that I don't know how to change.

I hold my breath.

I hold my breath so my brain can focus on the lack of oxygen and not on the panic or the fear or the hope.

I hold my breath so I can focus on the black spots that dance in the corners of my vision; so I don't have to focus on the brown eyes bright like amber lit through with sunlight in front of me.

I hold my breath so I don't have to think of anything other than the next breath I might breathe in; so I don't have to think about his voice or the things he's said or the way he's expecting me to answer him.

I hold my breath but I can only hold it for so long.

And when I finally let go, the world comes crashing in and my lungs burn from more than just the fresh air.  

They burn with fears and thoughts and words I'll never be brave enough to say.  

With reasons why we can't and why it's too late and why I'm not right for him.

And since I don't have the words or the timing or the courage, I just take a deep breath again and hold it until I can't anymore.

Sorry Doesn't Fix Everything

Apologies are supposed to heal things.
They're meant to mend the tears we rip into one another with our own savage humanity because our words have teeth and our actions have talons.
They're supposed to be like a salve on the burns we inflict when we let anger burn too bright and burst out of us.
They're supposed to stitch us back together like lacerated skin when we lash out sharp and fast and hard.
They're supposed to be like treaties signed on neutral ground to end the battle.
But this one feels like stones tied to my feet right before I'm pushed into the water.
This one feels like a punch to the gut when I had my eyes closed, praying to be done.
This one feels like exhaustion; heavy and cumbersome and oppressive.
This one feels nothing like healing or freedom or peace.
It feels like a new, jagged wound that I don't know how to fix.
It feels like I might bleed out in agony because you said sorry like a dagger slipped between my ribs right to my heart and I thought we were done fighting.

Dangerous Armor

My fears rattle in my chest like broken breaths every day, but at least they feel familiar.
Fear and doubt and self-criticism are as natural to me as breathing and blinking and movement.
I never realized how heavy they laid upon me-the pieces of armor that have become who I am thrust upon me by what I have lived through.

The hope that buzzes beneath my skin now is a stranger to me.
It feel foreign and dangerous, like a toxin injected right into my veins.
The high is almost nice, but I've ridden the cycle so many times that I know a crash is coming.
Instead of closing my eyes and riding the high, I keep my eyes down watching the ground fly closer, anticipating disaster.

I want the hope-I swear I do-but it feels so fragile.
So breakable in these shaky, clumsy hands.
And it's never just my own hands that I have to contend with, there are always others.
Hands that don't know how to be gentle, and hands that don't know how to keep their distance, and hands that poke and prod and never support.
There are so many hands on the hope that wavers before me that I don't know if I'll ever be able to hold it on my own and I don't know if I want to.

Because I'm a coward.
Because I'm so tired of watching it break.
Isn't it better to have never touched it at all then to watch it fall from the ocean of hands that hold it and forever wonder whose fault it was that it broke?
Because the voice in my head likes to point fingers during the day but when it's just me and her she changes her tune and blames the only one left...
Me.

I don't want sympathy or apologies when I say what's next, I just want to say it because it feels true.
I let the fear and doubt and self-criticism settle like an old, unshakable cough in my lungs.
I let distrust wrap itself around me like a warm cloak.
I let the past make itself into a shield and I shoulder it almost gladly.
Because it's easier.
Because I know if I'm always on alert no one can sneak in and hurt me.
Because the weight of that armor, no matter how dangerous, has become my new normal and I don't know if I could live without it.

A Decade Come and Gone

I feel like the last day of 2019 deserves some kind of recognition.  It's taking with it not just twelve months, but the last ten years.  It feels surreal that tomorrow we'll wake up in a new decade, with a timestamp sci-fi movies used to indicate a far and fantastical future.

I feel like I should have poetic words about the last ten years but I don't.  I graduated high school and college.  I got a job and quit a job and found my calling.  I went to different countries, different states, different cities.  I loved hard and fast and I hurt the same way; bright and wild like gasoline on a burn pile.

I stood in front of strangers and read them my words and soaked up their clapping and smiled when it was over.  I wrote entire books and sold them and saw them in the hands of others.

I got my heart broken more times that I can count.  So many times that when I look at the mirror now, I can nearly see the scars on my soul as if they pucker and shimmer on my skin.

I got what I wanted, what I begged for a hundred times and realized that most of the time the things we want and the things we need are vastly different.  I got things I never knew I wanted and I had to learn how to go on when they were snatched from me.

I had so much fun.  I laughed until two in the morning and danced in driveways doused in silver moonlight.  I made last minute trips and smiled until my face ached and felt so much joy that my body shook and tears came to my eyes.  I had the time of my life.

I met new friends and faced new fears and I fought for everything I have.  I fought for the goodness, I fought to exist, I fought for better than I had before.

2010 started in neon colors and froze in the middle, dark and bleak and empty and finally thawed out into gentle, tentative pastels.  It took a girl and burned her down until her bones were all that remained and slowly formed a new skin on her.  The last decade created a phoenix and I'm so grateful for all of it.  The pain, the joy, the long days and the longer nights; it helped me find myself.

And yet, when I look forward to 2020 I can't help but silently hope that the next ten years are gentler to me than the last have been.  I can't help but to hope for a few more quiet days, a little less heartache, a little more sunshine.

As for the last twelve months, the last ten years, I could spend a dozen lifetimes coming up with "what-if"s and "if I could do it over"s but it's over now.  The last ten years made me who I am and while it was long and hard it was also magnificent and beautiful.  It was my life.  

I can't imagine what the next 10 years have in store for me, but I'll go in knowing that I'm stronger than I was before and that no matter what comes, I was created to live this exact life that I have and that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Until next year <3

-M

Go. Anywhere.

There is a need somewhere within me, a need that wedges itself between my ribs and wraps around my bones, a need to go.

Go, it whispers.
Go.

Anywhere.

To walk new streets until my feet know the pebbles in the road like old friends and maps are obsolete.

To wear the city like a sweater until the itch of unfamiliarity fades to a warm, soft comfort that wraps me tight each morning.

To breathe in the air and breathe out the slang and the language like I was born with it in my lungs; like nature planted me the words in my chest when I took my first breath.


There is an itch beneath my skin that begs me not to stay put for too long.

Go, it tells me.

Go.

Anywhere.

Live in new places until they are old friends.

Meet strangers on every corner until every corner is filled up with familiar faces.


Go, it tells me.

Go make the far away lands home so many times that one day, not a place in the world will feel foreign.

Wear the culture like a jacket and the streets like shoes and the language like breath and become the all world wound up in one, single body.


Go, it tells me.

Go.

Anywhere.

Between Two Worlds

Sometimes I feel almost whole.
Sometimes, I can put the trauma behind me and pretend it never happened.
Sometimes I feel like I belong here, in this time, in this place.

And then there are other times where nothing is right.

Times when my chest feels so hollow it aches.
Times when the bones beneath my skin feel like fragile branches of an ancient tree.
Times when winter ice creeps into my veins and freezes me to the spot.
Times when the world around me feels so foreign that I can't see straight.
Times when the wounds I've carried so long that they have scabbed over start to crack open again and sting and bleed and hurt anew.

There are times where I feel like a changeling, left in place of a human girl and destined for something ugly and scary and grim.
There are times where I feel so invisible I'm tempted to scream or to run just to see if anyone would notice at all.

Goodbyes and Reminders

I screamed goodbye to you four years ago with eyes full of tears and a throat full of nails.  My world was ash back then and telling you goodbye was snuffing out the last burning ember of hope.

I cried goodbye to you in my car, alone, counting my way through a panic attack when I saw you in the store six months later.  I've rarely hurt so bad in my life but I still remember the pain lancing through my heart like a needle into fabric, even after all this time.

I whispered goodbye to you every day for a year as I trained myself not to look for your car in the parking lot at your old apartment building.  Even when I knew you had moved, my broken heart found the habit hard to break and I kept thinking you'd appear right there where I left you.

I said goodbye to you again today when I saw a picture of you.  You're not looking at the camera because you're looking at me.  I'm out of the frame, but I remember.  And that picture of you posing for the picture I was taking caught me in the chest like a taser until I was stuck replaying that day over and over again in my head.

Every time I say goodbye to you, I have to say something to myself too.  I have to remind myself that I deserve better, even if you never believed it.  I have to remind myself that I have worth, even if you never saw it.  I have to remind myself that I am precious, even if you never thought so.

Every time I say goodbye to you it hurts just a little bit less.  Maybe today was the last time I'll have to do it.  Maybe by this day next year, I'll have forgotten you and the agony of goodbye will be over and the reminders will be truths etched into my heart.