Narrow Tunnel

I don't realize how hard I'm gripping the wheel until my hand starts to ache.  Prying my fingers loose is like trying to pry steel bars apart.  45 isn't fast enough, and neither is 50 or 60.  But I temper the foot on the pedal so that I'm just on the verge of going too far over the speed limit.  The road I'm on isn't long enough.  No road is long enough.  I just want to drive, fast and far, until everything I'm running from is a speck in the rearview.  But the things I'm running from are stitched into my skin and my head and my heart like they're supposed to be there.  Like I was out cold and someone thought they'd do me a favor by making them permanent.
I click the dial on the radio up, up, up.  Until I am the obnoxious person on the road whose music seeps into the cars around me when we slow down.  Until the vibrations buzz through the car and through my chest and into my lungs and make it hard to breathe.  But I'd rather drown in the songs on the radio than the pain that I'm trying to numb myself to.  The pain that's racing up behind me like a runaway train off the tracks.
Every zip code I speed through takes an ounce of pressure off my chest.  And when I finally get towns and towns away, and my breathing is easy and the tears aren't stinging my eyes anymore I realize I've got to go back.  It doesn't matter if I drive in circles out there for hours or if I sit stone still in my car in a parking lot because before too long, I have to turn around.  Leaving is like driving through a narrow tunnel that widens a little more with every inch; the light at the end gets brighter and bigger until the sky opens up above you and you're free.  Coming home is watching the tunnel narrow every smaller until you can hear the roof of the car scraping the top and see sparks catching on the mirrors beside you and the light at the end dies slowly until it's only a pinprick.
As I drive home, I try to breathe the way they've taught me.  I try to count the colors, count the clouds, count the cars.  I try to talk my self down and focus on the lyrics and not on the thoughts that scratch at the back of my mind like mice demanding to be let in.  I try and try and try.  But no matter how far I move or drive or run, no matter how long I'm gone, the pain always catches up to me.  I drive home and the closer I get, the tighter I hold the wheel until my knuckles are white and the edge of my vision is black and everything in between in the bright red spark of fiery pain and panic.  I drive home and the closer I get, the louder all the thoughts are and the less it matters how high I have the radio cranked.
Fingers grasp the wheel in a death grip, my chest constricts with the poison my own body sends to betray me and my eyes dart back and forth looking for predators, looking for danger, looking for ghosts.  When I pull in the driveway, it's like falling into a pocket of safety, a three hundred square foot space where the outside world doesn't know I land.  But the walls close in the longer I sit, so soon I'll have to go again for another drive, another attempt to run, another chance to breathe easy and I am so incredibly tired of having to run.  I just want to live.

Eyes like the Ocean

I just want to be understood.
I want to show someone the puzzle pieces that make me up and have them smile because it's not a mess.
I want to talk about the things I've been through; the things that broke me and the ways I put myself back together again and not be looked at like a baby bird with broken wings.
But I know if I tell you, your blue eyes will be an ocean of pity and I will drown myself in them.
I won't be able to help myself.
Even when they were just curious pools of sky, I drowned myself in them until there was nothing but you, you, you.
I ran out of air, up there in your atmosphere and fell to earth and shattered on impact.
So no, I can't tell you the battles I've fought or show you the scars I've got.
Because when you look at me with that big wide open heart and eyes that mesmerize me like whirlpools of heartache, I will dive in head first without taking a breath.
I will breathe you in, even if you are water in my lungs.
Even if you are death to the fragile body I keep resurrecting.
And I might be a phoenix…I might burn out just to come alive again, but I'm fire and the waters of you will inevitably put me out for good and I am not ready to go and give up this life I've fought for.
This life I've burned for.
This life I've lost time and time again.

You and Him

You sound like him but your voice is softer, your words make more sense.
You sound like him but my heart doesn't stop, it just slows down a little bit.
You sound like him and it makes me wonder if I really love you or if I'm just looking for ghosts of him wherever I can find them.

I liked how he made the world fall away.
I like how you make me feel alive.
I hate thinking of him when I talk to you.

You almost look like him, in the right light when I'm sad and nostalgic.
But when the sun comes up and the way you say my name makes everything else melt you look nothing like him, nothing like a monster, nothing like danger.

How do you tell a dream apart from a nightmare when the monster and the prince could be twins?
Does magic still exist or is this just some delusion I've sold myself on so I don't have to be alone?

You sound like him, but it doesn't stop me from wanting you.
You look like him, but I want to look in your eyes for just another second.
You remind me of him, but then again so does the night time and the ocean and everything in between.

A Star Collapsed

I thought I could trick myself into staying.
"He knows me...he just doesn't say it" I said to myself so many times.

But I know it's a lie and it's sour on my lips no matter the number of repetitions.
He looks at me and he sees the girl he met and he hasn't noticed I'm not her anymore.
He looks at me and I know what he sees; I used to see her too staring back at me in the mirror.
She was wide-eyed, on the brink of collapse.
She was a star just before it burns out- brilliantly bright and seconds from demise.
She was hollow inside but she smiled and listened and wasn't too loud.
She blended, learned to camouflage herself to stay safe.
She hid the bruises on her soul with a light voice the way someone might cover bruises on their skin with make up.
She did the same with the scars, slipping her foot on top of the drop of blood that fell on the floor to hide it.
I can see her so clearly, it's almost like she's here beside me and not just an echo of the past.

But that's not who I am anymore.
The girl in the mirror now is too tired to hide the pain.
She is the star after collapse-the black hole, big and vast and unknowable-starving to fill the void.
She isn't hollow anymore, she smiles, not as often but more true, and she's louder now; she's making herself known.
She blends in the way a shadow does, only when everything is dark; other than that she stands out like a dark silhouette on sun drenched concrete.
She doesn't hide the pain, she just hopes no one asks about the bruises and the scars; but if they do she tells them.
She doesn't have to step on drops of blood anymore because she stopped bleeding; now she just has to stop picking at the scabs.

I wonder sometimes how people who say they know me can look at me and not see this new person, this one who is healing and who isn't ashamed of the past.
I wonder how people who say they care about me never saw how the girl before was a shell.
I wonder how he talks to me and thinks he's so close to my heart.
I wonder how to tell him that we're strangers now and it doesn't really even hurt.

Wildflower. Wallflower. Wildfire.

He is a mumbler when he speaks.  I guess I'm hard of hearing and the two of us didn't make a great pair no matter how hard we tried.

I never understood what he wanted...or maybe I just didn't try hard enough to listen.  He spoke in riddles and slurred his words together and let them slip out just beneath his breath.

I guess that's what happened when I thought I heard him say he wanted a wildfire.  I guess that's why I thought I was right for him.

It turns out he wanted a wildflower.  Someone bright and free and dazzling but still soft and beautiful and pleasant.

It turns out that's not who I am.  It's who I used to be, but that's not enough because now I'm two steps away from that version of me.

All the pieces of me are too similar; wildflower, wallflower, wildfire.  It's easy enough to get them confused; especially when he whispers no matter how many times I beg him to speak up.

If he'd known me back then, when I was bright eyed and saw the world through a prism of color and possibility maybe we would've had a chance.  But he met me when I was a wallflower, clinging to the edges of reality with a fragile grip, ready to let go.

And now, he hasn't noticed that the wallflower caught fire and now I'm a raging, dangerous wildfire that burns up anything in my path.  He hasn't noticed that the soft edges of me are burned up, turned to ash, turned to flame.

He thinks he knows me but he doesn't.  He calls my blue-green eyes emerald and it just proves he hasn't noticed that there's quite a bit of blue in my sometimes green.

He thinks he knows me but he doesn't.  He tells me I have my life together when if you asked him to name three things that make up "my life" I don't think he actually could.

Despite it all; all the miscommunication and the attention he doesn't ever pay, I still try to tame the flames and be the wildflower he wants.  I try to turn the flicking tongues of destruction into poised nonthreatening petals.

Wildflower...wallflower...wildfire...what does it matter anyway?  Whether I'm wild or tame he doesn't know my middle name; he doesn't know me.

He doesn't try.  He just mumbles and drifts past me, only latching on when he's bored.

Wildflower...Wallflower...Wildfire...it doesn't matter.  He doesn't see me.

Prompt: A sleeping dog/Old barn/Blazing fire

It was cold that night.  So cold I could barely feel my fingers as I flicked the match across the strike patch on the box.  So cold I was almost numb to all the pain that place had brought me.  Almost.

Under the porch, were the wood was dry and exposed I couldn't help but think of the rooms above me.  The blood was long washed out of the carpet in the sitting room but I still saw it, still smelled it, still felt it slipping underneath my feet.  The hallway upstairs had been bleached and the carpet had been replaced but I still saw the body when I was on the top step, still heard my own scream ringing in the air, still heard the wail of sirens in the distance.  Those were the latest pieces of tragedy to befall the old house but they were not the only ones.  Time was not kind to the house or the inhabitants and I wanted so desperately done with the cursed place.  To be done with the pain.

The wood caught quickly and for a second, I fell back on my heels and watched it burn.  The fire was hot, bright, brilliant.  It warmed me from the cold, dry air.  When the blaze was too much, I tossed the match box into the flames and crawled away between the bottom steps of the porch and walked, slow and steady down the gravel drive.

Before me, the barn stood like a sentry at the front gate.  In the doorway, Bark was sleeping away yet another night.  He opened one eye when I fell into the cold dirt beside him and moved his head into my lap.  If he saw the house he'd guarded his whole life burning down before him, he didn't act like it.  Instead, he went back to snoring as I stroked his long, soft fur.  The grey in his muzzle reminded me that he'd been witness to the dozens of mysterious catastrophes that had befallen us here.

I waited until the house was a giant, blazing inferno before I fumbled my phone out of my pocket.  The operator knew my name when I called.  So many calamities and the local authorities start to learn your name and address.  She was asking me too many questions.  Was I safe?  Where did the fire start?  How long had it been going?  Was I hurt?  Was anyone else inside?  My voice echoed off the beams in the old barn.  I was safe.  I didn't know anything about the fire; I was taking Bark for a walk when I saw it.  I wasn't hurt; for once.  No one else was inside; for once.  I heard the sirens before I even hung up the phone but a soft feeling of peace fell on me knowing they would be too late.  It was finally over.

I didn't have to call my father.  He knew when he saw the lights heading up our long, winding road that another tragedy has collapsed on top of our shrinking family.  When he found me in the barn, Bark asleep in my lap, he let out a long held breath.  He didn't ask any questions.  He just sat in the dirt beside me.  I think he was just as relieved as me.  We watched them point giant hoses at the house but the damage was done.  There was no saving it.  No point in saving something that had never done its part to save anyone else.

Mismatched Pieces

I grew up fast.
I was young and bright and then my life changed in an instant and just like that, I was grown.

My head was 30 when I was only 18.
My mind was 30.
My thoughts were 30.
My priorities and interests and focus all missed the space between where I was and where I was supposed to be.

But my heart...my heart got left behind.
The rest of me propelled forwards and I forgot about my heart because it didn't seem to matter then.
I left it in the hands of a green-eyed monster who didn't know how to take care of it and didn't care.
I left it in an 18 year old body that died and I forgot that it might matter later on when the dust settled.
No wonder I feel like the pieces of me don't fit together right.

My years on this earth are finally catching up to the years put on my soul but my heart is too small, too young, too naïve.
My heart still believes in magic and romance and happy endings while my head is past all of that, past trust, past hope.
My heart falls in love at the drop of a hat and my head doesn't believe that love exists at all.
And with two different ages sharing one body, I get myself into situations that I have no idea how to handle.

Because the boy who stands in front of me now and says he wants me doesn't do any of the things I thought he was supposed to.
And if he did, I don't know what I would do.

I'm an adult with a teenager's heart and a jaded soul and those edges don't line up.
They never did.
What if they never will?

My Sweater

I have a sweater in my closet that I can't wear because of you.
It doesn't smell like you anymore, not since I washed it a dozen times, but that doesn't matter.
I look at it and I think of you.
I look at it and I think of the last time we were together, the way things felt like puzzle pieces that don't go together quite right.
I look at it and I think of your hand in my hair and my heart in my throat.
I have a sweater in my closet that I used to love and now I can't stand the sight of it.
The stripes hurt my eyes and the pink hurts my heart and the grey just hurts all over.
It doesn't smell like you, it smells stale and unworn and untouched.
Like me.
Like us.
I have a sweater in my closet that I can't touch because you touched it and now it's not mine.
I have a sweater made of memories that drowns me when my fingers skim the sleeves.
And sometimes when I pass it, I have to pause and wonder if you remember it too or if it's just another drunken blur that you don't care about anymore.

The Latest Illness

There are a whole host of things wrong with me.
The overwhelming fear that buzzes faster into panic, the sadness that tries to drown me, the voices that whisper hurtful things to me in the middle of the night.
But lately the loneliness is all I can feel.
It makes me wish for the times when I was numb.
The loneliness is crushing, sitting in my chest like a boulder; making me gasp for air and all I get is water.
It scares me so much sometimes that I want to tell someone else, to remind someone that I'm here.
And then I remember I don't have anyone to tell and even if I did, what would I say?
It makes me miss the years when I was blind to what was happening around me and everything felt like magic and sunshine.
Because now all I feel is water filling my lungs and my veins and my head.
Water and ice that stings so much I can hardly breathe.
And there are days where it doesn't hurt so much, days when I get to spend time in the world of the living laughing with my friends and remembering what it feels like to really be alive.
But then those friends turn to each other with more than friendship in their eyes and I know it's my time to step away.
And the other friends want me around as long as I'm the silent, wide-eyed darling who has nothing to say and laughs at everything.
If I become someone else, someone like who I really am, they don't need me anymore.  Don't want me.
And the other friends are great, perfect really, and it's not their fault but there's a line somewhere that separates us that I can't cross because I still live with my parents and I haven't said "I Do."
The latest disease that I can't forget I have is the loneliness that eats at me daily from the inside out.
It's never gone, always lingering, always painting shadows darker they are and silent moments longer than they should be.
The grief is bad but at least I was numb.
The anxiety is worse but at least I'm dealing with it.
The loneliness is a different beast entirely, a beast I wish I couldn't feel, a beast I don't know how to tame.
This sickness is like a chill that's set in that I might not be able to work out.
I don't know my chances of recovery.

Tension

There is a tension between who I am now and who I used to be and who I thought I might become.

The past is something I cannot escape and the present is not the embodiment of the future I had imagined.

There was a girl, once, who was light and sunshine.  She was wild and free and made of all the things that have no boundaries; like the sea and the sky and watercolors.

There was a girl shattered.  Made of fragile, broken pieces, begging to be left alone.  Begging to be saved.  Begging to fall asleep until the pain faded away and left her hollow.  And so she was.

There is a girl now, pieced together with reinforced steel and made strong.  She lives like the seams of reality are nearly bursting all around her.  She walks delicate and smiles softly and tries not to say too much, tries not to disturb the fragile seams around her.  She holds herself together like all the pieces might tumble out if she moves too fast and keeps her mouth closed to keep in the secrets.

There once was an idea of a woman, bold and beautiful and breathtaking.  A woman who wore scars like charm bracelets and told the tales of her past the way warriors told stories of war around the fire.  That woman was made of gold, spun thin into thread and woven through sunlight and glass and grace and magic.  That woman was everything.  She was a goddess and a princess and a warrior.  She was a dream and now she is a memory, a ghost standing on the bank of a river, just out of my reach.

These girls that existed, this girl who now is, and this woman who once was meant to be, they pull at the edges of myself.  Begging me to relapse, begging me to sleep, begging me to stand tall, begging me to reign.  The tension is too much, the skin pulled too tight, the limbs pulled too many directions like being drawn and quartered.  The tension takes over and I shut my eyes and will them all away.  Let me be.  Let me sit in silence without the pain, just for one moment.  Just one second without the tension would be a reprieve.