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.

I Wrote Down the Story of Us

I wrote down the story of us.
I changed your name and the color of my truck but the rest is truth.
Just truth.
I wrote down the story of us, in vague sentences and in specific details and it only takes up ten pages.
Two years of my life summed up in ten pages.
It feels like a joke.
I wrote down the story of us and I couldn't help changing the ending.
So that part isn't truth.
It's all wishes and wants and should-have-beens.
The end is my favorite part because it saves us.
It turns our shipwreck into a painting.
It takes the broken pieces of us and glues us back together in some new, undiscovered masterpiece.
I wrote down the story of us and I miss you so badly I can't breathe.
I miss you and I'm angry and I'm hurt.
It reminded me of so many things.
I wrote down the story of us and I don't know if it should make me laugh or cry.
I do both.
I smile at the beginning, when we were close and things made sense.
And I write through tears in the middle, where it gets messy and we turn into a disaster on the page.
I wrote down the story of us and I wish it was different.
I wish we were different.
Or maybe I wish we had never changed.
I wrote down the story of us.
I changed your name and the color of my truck but the truth is still the same.
The truth is that it hurts.
And the truth is I still keep wishing that the ending on my paper will play out in my real life.

Ghosts

This town is small and full of ghosts.

I walk in the coffee shop and a bell tolls above me.
To my left is the long table where we used to sit.
And I see us there every time.
Blue eyes and soft smiles and whispers floating between us.
And it's so real, I might as well be sitting there with you now.
But I'm not...I never am anymore.

I pull into the parking lot with tall brick buildings lining every side.
The space where we used to park is nearly always empty.
And I see us there every time.
Loud laughter and louder music and smiles so wide, the sky is jealous.
And it makes my chest ache so hard I can't breathe.
We're not there...we haven't been for some time now.

I hear that song on the radio and the memories come back like a tidal wave.
The room where we met is bright and alive in my head and my heart.
And I see us there every time.
Jokes as sharp as tacks and sparks burning in the air between us.
And it makes me sick with the bittersweet remembrance of it all.
You've been gone...for a long time.

This town has no ghosts of it's own.
They're mine.
They live deep in my heart and linger on the corner of my vision.
And I don't think I can ever out run them or be rid of the scars on my heart that they're tied to.

Another Letter I'll Never Send (#3)

Dear ******,

Fifteen weeks wasn't enough time for me to know you.  Years have passed and I still think of you most days.  In the car, I'll hear the song that came on the day I met you and wonder where you are.  In a crowd, I'll see someone with eyes like yours and wonder how you're doing.  Fifteen weeks was all we had and it felt like a breath and a lifetime all at once.  Sometimes, I daydream that you'll walk through the doors of my local coffee shop and come back into my life forever.  Sometimes, I daydream that you'll read this and know I miss you.  Sometimes, I daydream about what it would've been like if we had stayed.

I split my life into phases.  You were the beginning of light.  Of coming back to life.  And I don't think I ever told you just how much you saved me.  My whole life, I've felt invisible-partially due to my own desire to blend but also because people never really see me.  They see my laugh and my smile and they stop there.  They never see the quiet moments when I panic or the nights when I cry myself to sleep.  They never see just how hard I'm trying to maintain.  But then you looked at me and  in that moment I began to truly exist.

My moments with you are so clear in my memory, laser cut and bright and vivid.  I never want to forget the day we met, when you made a quiet joke and I was the only one who heard you.  I never want to forget the moment when our eyes met and I knew I had met my match.  I never want to forget the day I made you laugh-really laugh-and how the sound felt like coming up from beneath the waves and taking a full breath of air.  I never want to forget the way you fought for me; the way you saw the pain in my face in a split second and changed the energy in the room.  I never want to forget anything about you.  The green eyes and bowties and silent challenges.  The tiny spark of hope you lit in the ashes of my broken heart.

Because of you, green eyes still bring a smile to my face.  Because of you, I know I'm not invisible.  Because you, I will always do a double-take when I see anyone in a bowtie.  Because of you, I'll always be holding out hope that the universe might bring us back together.

Love Always,
Boots.

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.