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.

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.