dear....

we looked down at our scarred and broken feet and told ourselves that this was normal.

i think we were only repeating what we ourselves knew to be a lie, handcrafted by years of smiling parents and bleeding friends and crying other halves on the opposite end of the world. we had curled in on ourselves in the dead of each hungry night clutching bruised fists to our mouths and biting teeth into our bones.

trying to deny, deny, deny. i like to imagine (because it makes me happy) that as our health declined then skipped then dropped we would have looked down at our bodies and said, yes, this is wrong but i know that with each shattering and crumbling relapse we fell further into the pit of ‘this is what we want.’

mirrors were cursed in the morning—don’t you remember that—silhouettes torn by the backs of our hands with the sweat of what we had seen burning its way down into our palms.

if you had lifted our fingers at those moments you would have found needles scratching another snapped record of ‘yes i’m fine’ and ‘no thank you’ into the heavy air like it was the sound of the world ending. and we treated it like that. we clung to our safeties and counted the numbers like they could have saved us, and when it came down to just us and the equations written on our lips in glass, they did.

they pulled us from the brink we had created then imagined. molasses under our heels  and the future invisible (we were invincible) we plowed through the days like we could have stopped it at will.

 i like to think (because it makes it better) that there could have been an ending for us one day. when we could have closed our eyes in peace and pressed closed the pages of our wind-up life. but it was a general broken truth that even though we see the glimmering possibility of love in this, it was far from that. we were spent candles withering and smoking shattered on the floor of stereotypes and past lives we were

we were breathing. and for the moment, that would be okay. that would be enough.

because now look at us, sitting on top of the world and pretending like it’s alright to smile. look inside and backwards through our eyes and we’re still poems that won’t ever make sense we’re still exclamations of the disease that lingers in our hearts and

won’t

let

go

we are

tired but we’re only children wrapped in the skin of this new era. don’t look at me don’t look at me mother sister sister don’t come near until the flames have taken away what is left of the person you knew. don’t come close until you see my future crumbled away through my fingers burning smoking cry weep on the floor.

sometimes i think (because it fixes everything) that it’s a sign that the numbers align little pieces to our own sick puzzle, don’t look at me. i will still answer your calls. for a while we were singular and even though your number is still locked away in the cabinet of my mind i can recite your name backwards and forwards and still have enough air in my fucked up throat to close my eyes and whisper. when i don’t answer it’s because i’m waiting for the voicemail so i can replay it a thousand times and never get hurt. you pop my eardrums, you make the silence louder and without me i sob into the walls (they come alive) because i am missing. you.

i do not hang up the curtains you pulled down. i still count my calories and then when there is nothing left to say i count my steps and then my breaths and then every time i blink. when i don’t open the door and pretend to be somewhere you find i shouldn’t be you smash the windows you step inside you sit on my floor and stare at me and i am

broken

i do not speak and you make me well again you

you are whole and i am not.

i am jealous and you get to watch.

imprints of your fingertips on my spine each gasping pain where my bones come together. i still feel your eyes. if i concentrate i can think of your voice it’s been forty years but i remember your accent i remember the numbers.

things have changed.

this is not the most perfect miracle i have created, but it is the aftermath of what you do best. i am nothing now i fly i am a backwards wailed lamentation squeezed between the keys the door of the car the crash the accident that sent me opening my eyes into a life i have never wanted.

i am over you. i do not taste you on my lips. i do not breathe you at night i do not but

who am i kidding.

i still do not sleep. when i do not see results the second it happens i crash and we burn and then you’re there again holding me back.

but what can i say anymore?

i am still a four page novel we’re empty metaphors for the perfect life nobody wants. i like to imagine (because it makes me smile) that we formulated this lie in the backs of our minds and sent it forward with a weak throw that summed up our race our last stand against the inevitable.

in the end our old selves will fall to their knees and we came blinking naïve into the sunlight like we’d never seen it before. we still hide. we write messages and then send them away in broken bottles.

i  have pulled you away my love but this is the lie the secret i’ve succumbed to. this is my giving up and giving out laid in nine different ways before your hands. do what you like with what’s left of me. pick over it like art. weep at the remains. hide your tears for a glimpse of what you’ve been missing. press your fingers against the tails of my breathing and the sweep of my eyes skyward then white. because i am dust i am just another thing you cannot touch or take away. i am to be watched now that i cannot watch you. i am one more name you can’t say after dark. grovel in my steps, find code in my writing. send me backwards send me away shatter the sleep this is what you wanted

this is what you wanted

this is what you wanted.

sincerely yours.