day fifty-three.

i've been a little lost. 

the loneliness is palpable in this city. i've brushed past him on subway 5, holding a briefcase but no expression. i've heard them on the street: whistling as the girls pass by. i've seen it in searching eyes, in forced smiles, in the cellphone that never gets put away. 

it's swallowing me. and it is dark and it is terrifying. and i can't quite stand to look it in the face because it is more than i am ready to feel. these are the things they should have prepared us for.

i am trying to find my way. 

S. 

{Photo: Margaret Durow Photography}

cardiac arrest.

the heart is a many-ridged thing

not two curved pieces folding into each other
it has nooks that no one’s ever told you about
            it shrinks and then explodes
                        with something thick and awful and necessary.

it has valves and doors and windows
and you crawled in from underneath the floorboards
            you poisoned the water
                        you hid yourself in a crevice.

you hid where my fumbling fingers could not pry you loose
            where I could not rip your leeching flesh from me
                        without first tearing away fingernails full of my own vein and tissue.

my heart pumped you through me
until you became part of the system; thick and awful and necessary
            until even my toes needed you to survive.

and that’s how it went for minutes or years
            I don’t know
but one day you slipped out
            you creeped out from the chimney or the front door
                        you left and you never asked, never told me where you’d go.

not here though. 

            not in that unreachable place in that corner of my heart.
                        not in the place you ruined inside me.

you tore those veins and tissue fibers when you left
and all your poison turned sour
            seeping down until even my toes
                        ached with a rigid bitterness
                                I can't get free from. 

S. 

{Photo: Adriana Petit Flickr}

These dead bones.

I can't find anything that speaks to me these days. Not the sun upon my skin, not the thought of summer fast approaching nor my soon return home. Not even the disappointment of being given up on - being left out in the cold - has sparked any sign of life within. 

Perhaps it's the latter that has hardened me, so I can no longer feel the warning signs of spring the way that I once could. I cannot be moved by the soft and lovely revelations of the Earth. I see them all, and I can recognize how my heart should be melting with the last remains of snow. Still nothing.

All I can think of is the way his heart beat with my head on his chest, and the way it compares to the pounding in my head these days. Life and vivacity now replaced with a droning, empty sound. 

I keep telling myself I need to take the pictures off the wall. I'm leaving soon - I need to pack the memories away. But I can't bring myself to do it. They're the only thing that's bright around this prison cell; holding me to my sanity by not letting the blankness of the room take over.

I guess, if I am afraid of anything, it is that I will be nothing: forever remaining a bare page. I fear that when all the accessories of life are stripped from me, I will be empty handed; becoming only the uniform, off-white walls that lie beneath these photographs. 

It occurs to me that this deep hollowness in me, that even spring cannot seem to shake this year, is only the beginning. And, oh, how that sends shivers up my spine. (And not the kind you gave me.)

S. 

{Photo: Ann He Photography}

This Is My Apology.

I am not the same one who walked away all those months ago.

I know you told me not to change, but who are you to demand that, and who am I to listen?

I've tossed away - and given - the best parts of who I was. Now only this remains. 

Sometimes I whisper my own secrets out into the air. I am nothing, I say, as the emptiness opens up and swallows my words. Yes - and you are alone. 

1am, and he kissed me on the nose and stared at me with those intense blue eyes, illuminated even in the dim lighting.

"What is it?" 

"Nothing. I just like the way you smile." 

It's the soft moments that scare me most. My heart wasn't built for caring, and besides, I can't shake the way your body felt. Yours felt better, and yet, his is real. 

2am arrived and I turned away from him - the darkness clashing with my bare white skin. I couldn't face the way he looked at me. "Stay the night, please". I don't like who I am anymore. 

5am blinked by and the ceiling tiles made faces in the dark. I thought they promised the world would be beautiful, but I don't see it; there is no strength left in these bones to fight for it anymore. 

I'm sorry for the disappointment I've become. I should have listened. 

S.

{Photo via: We Heart It}

The Broken Years.

I dare say I still reach for you through the empty spaces, just to see if you will answer. Of course, you never do. I don't know who to blame for that; or if blame is necessary.

I hardly trust myself to think on those days - irrelevant as they are - for fear that I will somehow alter the details. Dulling or skipping or smudging some small moment that meant something to me then. I don't want to lose it altogether, but the possibility of remembering it wrong seems a greater tragedy.

It isn't you anymore, though. I feel I should tell you this, so you know I'm not entirely lost. No. Not you, but rather, the comfort you brought. The illusion of safety I felt in your arms. The ease by which we existed together. 

It's difficult for me to find that here. By now, I'm nearly a full-time cynic, with little time to count my blessings, trust there's love, or hope for peace. Maybe 19 is too old to still hold on to magic - an age to stop waiting for that miracle, and instead, face the discordant song of reality: "You are alone; the strongest arms let go."

S.

{Photo: Flickr Kelley Smith}

I think I might know --

The snow is building up around me these days in a way that would be alarming in another world. A world I lived in a few short months ago, where snow came only as special occasion, accompanied with some degree of awe.

Now, I stand unamazed and unfazed by this phenomenon. Getting buried under the inevitable without raising an eyebrow. Settling into a new commonplace, rather than embracing it with previous childlike wonderment. 

And I feel like this may be some sort of metaphor, for my life currently - and I have some ideas towards its meaning - but I can't be bothered to work out the details.

I only know I've come to forgive you for everything you couldn't possibly apologize for; and that my anger has subsided into a dull 
hollowness that echoes slightly 
when I stand too near the edge.

No, I don't think you should be worried, yet.

S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}