claustrophobia .

I never had a problem with tight spaces until I met you. You made my life so goddamn unbreathable. You, with your phone calls and your line of questions. You fired them at me and I didn't have a chance. You placed me in front of my grave and BAM BAM BAM, I'm down, buried under everything I never got to answer because you knew. You already knew. You thought you knew, so you buried me. But you didn't know. And now I'm underground, closed in by particles and dirt, and it's not unlike being with you, because you were like that, so close that I couldn't breathe. So maybe suffocating here is better than in your arms but I don't think so. I think you made yourself insufferable, I think you got so near because you wanted to drive me away, and I think you left me before you let me speak because you did know. You knew, but you needed to pretend that it was me not you who couldn't stand small places. And the thing is that I could, until you shot me down and I got trapped under the weight of everything but your lips. Because I could live with phone calls and lines of questions. It was when they left that I fell into this pit. 

S. 

{Photo: Tamara Lichtenstein Flickr}

solidarity .

no one expects you to survive this
we are all mortal here
[and in the moments you forget, the world
will either seem too big for you
or you will feel bigger than it
and neither one will do you good
or change the fact that]
we are all mortal here.

S. 

{Photo: Margaret Durow Flickr}

not yet .

Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home,
beaten,
defeated.
But not as long as I can make stories
out of my heartbreak,
beauty out of my sorrow.

Sylvia Plath

{Photo: Tamara Lichtenstein Flickr} 

my ghost .

I was there when you taught yourself guitar - I listened through basic chords and tireless picking until you got it right. I would climb up after you in the giant tree behind your house - we'd kick at the moss and track the sun through the sky. I answered every time you called in the middle of the night - turning up the radio so my parents couldn't hear. We'd talk for hours, but I can't remember what about. 

I was there when you told me what you did to make it all go away. I cried into my bed that night because you failed, and I couldn't imagine if you hadn't. 

I was the one you called after you broke down. Psychosis. I brought you in a coffee you weren't supposed to have (largewithcreamandsugarplease). I sat with you in white rooms and listened to you explain yourself, but you didn't. 

I came back again, anyways. I brought you coffee again, anyways. 

I came back until one day they told me to stop coming back. You couldn't see me anymore, and I haven't seen you since.

And yet, I still hear your last words, haunting:

"Maybe you have already died. I know I have." 

S.

{Photo: Misshosna Flickr}