The picture is still on your wall. You don’t think about it often, but the times you do, you think you should feel more. You think of those who are free with their emotions, who can say – I am sad, I am happy, I am disappointed – as if the three words were just that when spoken. From your lips, they are three little hooks. When heard, they are three guilty disclosures. When offered, they are three knives pressed against your throat. So you say nothing. You can’t decide anyway. You tell them, give me time and I’ll figure it out, and they look at you strangely.
You don’t even know your own feelings? They ask.
No, you say. But I know yours.
Other people’s emotions press on you, niggle at you. Together, you and they share the same madness, though you’re waiting with a foot out the door, because the other shoe always drops. You’re tired, but you won’t admit it. Quit the fireworks, quit the waterworks, quit the wandering hand and heart looking for what you can’t offer. But here is what you will never say: you can, but you won’t. You don’t love rationality. It’s just that nothing has ever brought you out of it.
Staring at the picture, you remember that memories are fallible. Your mind’s minute becomes an hour – a day, a week, a year, a decade, a century, a millennium, an eternity. All the same. The laughter and tears are what was important. They are markers your mind runs to. Or maybe it’s time that is fallible. Perhaps memories are corrupted through numerous tries of reinvention, rewatching for the same tidbits you’ve already known is indelible in you, already. Just why do you keep thinking? You swore you’d quit the terse nostalgia, the taunting past rapture, but the unnecessary good times always manage to creep back in. It wasn’t perfect. It was failing. It was falling. Then you think – defiant, what’s the difference between falling and flying if you suspend time? If I imagine flight tenfold, thousandfold –with the intensity of Icarus – who can refuse my wings?
And so, the black fades to blue. The strong red to orange. Everything washes out, and the city keeps sleeping. They tell you to choose what lasts and won’t hurt in this world, but you only want your world narrowed down to the summer closeness of bodies, who knows the right – not the best – words without saying. You want back the sun before people prove you wrong on loyalty or what is enough, what is too much.
Some things last a long time.
The picture is new. The smiles within are old. You think about feelings you’ll never feel again.
ellievsbear
theartofmadeline
germansingergirl
andulkaphoto
yousharknotpass
prguitarman
dailybridgerton
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
areudirty
