in this light, what have they fed you?
when you're very, very quiet, sometimes the truth of it starts glinting in the river water: all this time, and you're still choking on grief.
ironic, you are so good at taking care of others. almost second-nature; you listen carefully. you try to help, always. where did you learn that when someone else is in pain, it's your responsibility? that you must be the one to take it in, to sublimate it, to make something good from it.
it almost feels like you're just balancing a scale - you sense you are somehow guilty of something, just-for-being. you can untilt that scale, as long as you are permanently helping.
it is possible to starve for love while eating out of the hand of someone you care for. birds gorge on bread and die hungry.
other people shove their anxieties and hurt and misery down your throat, and you just. swallow it. you keep it in your belly and try to turn it into something; try to burn it like coal.
sometimes you wake up and think oh, i see. the rest of me is just smoke.
