Just Gone, Not Forgotten

When he said my name, it felt like a promise.
And when he smiled at me, it felt like being set on fire.
Those feelings are a memory now.

I miss his voice some days.

When it feels like I'm forgetting him and the edges of his face are blurred by time.

When our moments feel faded, as if they were captured in on film but the photo was left in the sun too long.

That boy, lost in a sea of faces but remembered.

In the memory of the laughter that rumbled through his chest and then through my own.

In the moments when the sun paints the ocean the color of his eyes.

In the moments when memories roll out like tapestries on the back of closed eyes and feelings flit across the skin like whispers.

I was a girl then.  

I was fragile and naïve.

I saw the world through rose colored lenses.

I miss that girl some times.

When the world is grey and the weight of living seems too much.

When I spend days in silence and the word "hope" feels foreign and vague.

That girl, gone and forgotten but in still paid tribute to.
In the songs on the radio.
In the tear stained pillowcases.
In the moments when memories roll out like tapestries on the back of closed eyes and I drown in the feelings that seem so far way.

There are days where I look in someone's face and half expect to find him there, a smile on his lips and a joke rolling from his tongue.

There are days where I look in the mirror and see the girl reflected back at me with the shadow of a warrior keeping her in the shade.

Both of us are gone.
But the moments of us will stay forever; etched into our ribs by our beating hearts and seared into memory by the sparks that flew between us.
Both of us are gone.
But we remain forever.
Never forgotten.

Ideas and Feelings

The idea of staying feels stagnant.
Consistency feels stagnant too and it scares me half to death.
I sit in the car and I love the feeling of movement and I want it to last forever.
But I don't want to run.
And when I get tired, I want a place to call home and the same pillow to rest my head on.

The idea of a picket fence and a house with a porch makes me feel sick.
Though if it's from fear or from wanting, I can't quite tell.
And I want the ring and the white dress,
But what do you spend 50 years talking about?

The idea of my future terrifies me because it's so vast and so empty.
But there's also room for possibility.
There's room for more than the small things that pile up on top of me and crush me until the world blacks out.

The idea of staying feels stagnant.
The idea of commitment is scary.
The idea of going feels vague.
And the feelings are what take me by the throat and squeeze until I want to curl up and let them rage while I sleep.

I Am All Color

In my bones, I am color.
I am vibrant explosions of sound and light.
If you were to spill me on a canvas, there would be no straight, clean lines.
No blank space.
There would be colors overlapping and spilling off the edges.
Neons and pastels and primary colors mixing to make new hues the world hasn't yet discovered.
There is so much of me that one canvas might be too small.
You might need two, or three, or five.

I spent years trying to tone myself down.
Be dark.  Be quiet.  Be small.
The colors in me faded and soaked back in until I was a translucent ghost.
I hid the colors like powder in tiny, secret pockets.
And in the desert, in the heat, in the fire, the powder hid.
But when the rain came, giving me new life, the colors started to show.
They dyed the ground around me.
They dyed my skin and my hair and my laugh.

Now, the colors are home, living in my heart and bursting from me in every sentence, every smile, every breath.
And I won't give them up again for anything.
For anyone.
Because my color, my life, my vibrancy and exuberance are integral to my existence and to lose them for any reason would be to lose myself.

Friends

He says we're just friends and I choke on the breath I've been holding.
Smile-my brain tells me-and I comply.
My heart is short-circuiting.
He would appreciate the metaphor, but we're just friends now.
That's all.
I inhale caffeine like oxygen because it's sweeter than the bitter taste left in my mouth when I replay his words.
They echo over and over and they hurt and numb me and make me cold.
Even when he asked before, it was a miscommunication.
That's all I ever do-miscommunicate.
I wait too long and I hope too high and I use all the wrong words.
Always friends, never more.
Always a step behind the curve.
He says we're just friends-just so I know-and I swallow my pride like a mouthful of nails.
I nod, despite the sloshing in my head and the ring in my ears.
But never a ring on my hand.
Because I'm easy to talk to but not the girl you want to date.
Because I'm just your friend-in case someone misunderstood the way we joke.
I guess it's easy to misunderstand.
I did.
I always do.
But we're just friends and I laugh because it's fine.
It's always fine.
That's just what friends do.

Fragile Hope

I hold hope in my hand like a fragile, hand-blown glass piece.
Sculpted by each moment, stretched by every memory.

I am clumsy so I grip it tight.
Spider-web cracks, cracks threatening to come through.

I loosen my grip and it teeters in my hand.
Ground far below, hands too slow.

Is this what hope feels like?
Too fragile to touch, too delicate to let go?

If I drop it, surely it will break.
If I keep it, surely I will hold it too tight.
Broken either way.

Hope.

Fragile.

In my hand and falling to the floor.
The only thing I have left.

Another Letter I'll Never Send (#2)

Dear *****,

It's been a while.  Years actually.  Every time I drive through your town though, I think of you and wonder where you are and what you're up to.

In a sea of bad ideas and worse people, you were good.  You were always good.  Good to me, good to be around, good to follow.  You were always good.

Some of my favorite memories have your name written all over them and my best years are the ones where we were close.  I'm not quite sure what happened to us.  College I guess.  It has a tendency to expand your world so wide that you lose touch with people, even the ones you love.

When my world fell apart, you were there for me, and I probably never thanked you for that.  I've always been bad at saying thank you when someone's seen me vulnerable and stayed.

I remember sitting across from you on the beach and watching you text someone and I had this moment where I was acutely aware that you were in my life and I was happy.  It still makes me smile.  I still laugh about temporary tattoos of pop stars and hats that look suspiciously like UFOs.

I used to write you notes all the time, I'm sure it was annoying, but it helped me feel like you were still there even when you weren't.  I kept the note you wrote back after I begged you and begged you to write me one.  I taped it in a scrapbook and I hope I always remember when you gave it to me via someone else because I was overjoyed.

Remember when I was so distracted by blue eyes across the yard, that I walked into a glass door?  You never let me live it down.  I swear sometimes I can still remember how you laugh, the way it sounds like a surprise to you every single time.  That sound is getting harder to remember though. I guess that's what time does.  It blurs the lines and changes the sounds.

I miss you.  I guess all I'm trying to say is that I miss you.  I miss you and I miss us and I can't tell you how grateful I am to have known you.  Who knows, maybe one day the stars will align, and our paths will cross again.  I look forward to that day, even if it never comes.

Yours Always- M

Wished for Nightmares

People always say "be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it."
I wished, and I got, and all too soon, I regretted.
It's been months and the memory of it still makes me feel something twisted.
I want to scream at him to tell the truth.
I want to hide my face and forget him.
I want to sit in a quiet spot and whisper all these things to him and see how he reacts.
Because the memory of getting what I want is all consuming-like the vines that grow in Georgia.
It's out of place, but it's taking over.
It wraps itself so tight around my heart that I'm numb and covered in it.
It weaves in and out of my head until the ground beneath me is tinted green through the leaves.
It's been months but the memory has taken root in my chest and it winds itself around my rib-cage until I can't think straight and my breath feels shallow and painful.
And his name hurts like a thorn as it gets stuck in my throat.
I stopped wishing after him, after the wishes came true and turned into nightmares and now I feel like Sleeping Beauty awake in the castle but trapped by the thorns.

A History of Broken-ness

I have a history of broken-ness and I'm tired. 
My head is tired.  My heart is tired.  I'm tired to the bone and I'm tired of being tired. 
I want to find love and happiness and connection, but it seems like so much work I'm exhausted before it ever begins.  I feel like a vase that's been dropped on the floor and shattered and put back together over and over again.  The first drop was bad but the pieces were big and easy to find and it took time, but I got put back together.  Then someone set me on the edge of a table and pushed.  And I broke.  And I put myself together again.  And I broke.  And again, again, again, until there was no way for all the tiny pieces to be found.  I'm a marbled mess of pieces and edges and glue and tape, and he set me right back on the edge.  I can feel myself tipping at the slightest breath of wind.  It takes everything in me to stay upright and stay together and stay off the ground.  It takes everything in me to stay whole.  And if I break again, I can't say I'll survive. 
I can't say I'd have enough energy or concern to put myself together again.  Not after everything else.  Not after him.  I keep thinking of all these things I want and being too tired to get them or to fight for them.  I swear I could sleep for a month and I'd still be tired, maybe because being tired isn't the real problem.  Maybe because it feels like something deep down inside me is so broken that I don't even care anymore.  I've fixed so many things and I've healed so much that I never imagined I would be able to, but I'm not better.  There are problems that started so early on that still plague me.  Problems with how I see myself.  With how other people have told me to see myself.  Problems with reality and how I hate that it exists.  I'm reading a book and the girl said she writes to disappear.  To shut it all off.  And I think that's the truest thing I've ever read.  I have a lot of reasons for writing but mostly, I write because it tunes out reality and it turns me off and it brings something unreal to life.  It helps me melt into the ground and stop existing.  And that scares me.  The fact that I want to melt into the ground scares me.  The girl I was when I was little never wanted this life.  That girl wanted to be the star of the show and be bigger than life and remembered forever.  This girl I am now...she just wants to be invisible because when people see her, she gets hurt.  And when he looked in my eyes, I was waiting for the hurt.  I still am.  The silence of the other end of the phone is it's own kind of hurt.

To The One Who Feels Like Air

Everything about him is warm and solid and easy.  And I want it.  But I can never tell if I want him, or just what he feels like.  He holds my hand and plays with my hair and makes me laugh and it feels safe and I'm not afraid of it.  When I'm with other people, my blood pressure goes so high that the room starts to spin.  With him, my feet are on the ground and my soul is in my body and my heart is going the right speed.  Maybe that's not the feeling to chase.  Maybe that's just how I'm supposed to feel with everyone.  But I don't.  I don't feel safe with other people.  I don't feel whole or warm or right.  I feel like I'm going to crawl out of my skin.  I feel like my soul is too big for my body and it's pushing against me, trying to escape.  And then he puts his hand on my arm and my soul shrinks back down to the right size and I can take a full breath again.  Is that love?  Feeling like there's nothing wrong with what you are beside someone else?  Or am I the only crazy person who feels like I might float away on the slightest breeze?  Sometimes I think he feels the same way and we're both just clawing at the space between us to keep our feet on the ground.  There's no reason for us to hold hands when we sit in the floor or to hug every five seconds or to poke and hit and touch but we do.  We do it all the time and it's the only thing I have to hold onto sometimes.  It's the only thing that connects me back to the moment. 
I've spent a long time teaching myself how to reconnect with reality.  I count in eights.  I sign the alphabet.  I dissect the world around me with all five senses.  I pick a color and I find it everywhere that I can.  I ration my breaths.  But when he's around, I don't have to do that, I just have to reach out.  Sometimes, it's like he knows and he reaches for me before I can do it myself.  I don't now what that means for us.  Maybe it means we're supposed to pull our heads out of the clouds and be together.  Maybe not.  Maybe I'm just learning what safe feels like and right now, he's the only safe thing I have.  Maybe we're somewhere in between and we haven't found our landing spot yet.  Not knowing makes it hard when he's not around and my mind wanders and my imagination takes over.  Not knowing makes it hard when he's right there and we're constantly reaching for each other.  Not knowing makes it hard in the moments when the world feels way too big for me to function in alone and in the moments when this town feels so small that I fear I'll use up all the oxygen it has.  I don't think I want to be with him, it's more that being with him seems easy and I wish that it felt like that with a few more people.  I don't think I want him, but I want it to be this easy with the people I do want.  I don't know when the idea of breathing became synonymous with his name.  I don't know when the idea of phone calls became normal or when the separate "he" and "I" became the together "us".  I don't know when the tides shifted or when he became part of who I am.  Maybe when we spilled our pain out in the middle of the night and realized that we were both choking on the same brand of poison.  Maybe the next morning when we awkwardly and honestly talked about how rare that feeling was.  Maybe that's when I felt safe for the first time.  Regardless of when or how or why, the fact remains that he is my safe place.  I think of him and my hands stop shaking.  I think of him and my breathing slows down.  I think of him and all the fear that swirls up into a tornado slows down and settles.  I don't have that with anyone else and I don't know what it means, all I know is that it's one of the only things keeping me going these days and I don't want to lose it.  Or him.

Diagnosis: Feelings

Feelings are like this cough that won't leave my lungs.  They rattle around inside of me and clog up my throat.  They tear at me when they come tumbling out without warning or permission.  They burn and they sting and I try to shallow my breathing so they don't catch me off guard.

They settled in like a bad cold so many years ago and then the people came in like weather, changing the climate of my life so I could never truly get well.  I was sick so long the first time, that I forgot what it felt like to be well.  He came in and out, hot and cold, and gave me a long bought of pneumonia and bronchitis and the flu one after another.  They all hurt.  They all felt like death.  They all left me with wet eyes and a throat raw from choking on my feelings.  They left hollows in my cheeks and bags under my eyes and made my chest ache with every fragile breath.

Days and weeks and years passed and finally, I didn't shake so badly when I inhaled.  I met someone who felt like clear air.  Like summertime and deep breaths that didn't hurt.  He felt like breathing after holding your breath for a long time.  And when he left, the cold came in so quick I didn't have time to find a jacket.  I just caught a new cold.  Not so bad as the one before, but the cough lingered for months.  It game me headaches and made me stay in bed and hide from the world.  The world was sickness, that's all I learned from him.  That, and the fact that even things that feel like medicine can make you sick.

When the feelings that felt like sickness finally slipped away, I opened the windows and pulled the curtains back.  My heart was clean but it was empty.  It was lonely and sterile with a smell like pain that made it feel like a hospital hallway.

I didn't know it was coming the last time.  The feelings and their germs snuck up on me when I was least expecting it.  All it took were dark eyes and soft words and they were there in my lungs and I've been coughing for days.  It's an ugly, uneven cough that sounds rough and painful and weak.  It sounds bad but I feel worse.  I feel empty one second and like I'm drowning the next.  I feel so tired, I wish I could quit my job and sleep for the next two months.  I want to sleep until I forget him and I feel better or until he remembers and the truth knocks the sickness right out of me.

Because this cough is lodged in my lungs and the feelings are stuck in my chest and I can't breathe or think or sleep or move.  I want my life back, even if it means wandering the sterile halls of my hospital-clean heart all alone for a while.  I'd take clean sanitized air over this rattle in my chest and the scratch of my throat.