“DAMN, you should watch her walk away…” We are a generation of women who stiffen backs, purse lips and think, “really… I can’t remember the last time I stayed.” I left my dad when I was twelve. I crossed seven states by back roads, traveled the twisted veins of my own heart and swore to die before I created another millimeter of space in my life for men who spat shot-glass words as bitter and shallow as the promises they threw back, laughing at life like a sick joke. When they ask if it’s hard to walk away, they mean from love. At first I call it impossible, unbearable. I tell them it tastes like swallowing glass and makes about as much sense to the part of your heart that wants to keep beating - the part that doesn’t believe it can. But then I tell them I didn’t walk away from love. I walked away from the knot in the pit of my stomach that took root and grew with every wandering eye and missed call when I knew something I couldn’t admit to myself. I walked away from the relentless corrosion of inferiority - from the part of me that tried to hold a flame to all the other girls without realizing they were gasoline - without wondering how a man who never learned how to fight for what he wanted could treat me any differently. Now they ask if I’ll ever be done writing poems about you but I ask myself how I can put out the fire that burned the house down - how I can stop thinking I’m the house. I wish I could have seen that walking away and coming home are two sides of the same coin. If he was a flash flood, Home never asked why I left the windows open. Home found me, heart bloated like mold-soured pressed wood paneling and took bleach to the aftermath that crept up the walls.
“THE TRUTHS OF EXISTENCE ARE COMFORTING TO SOME AND TERRIFYING TO OTHERS”
by ali-thoughts
