Mae S

writer, poet & a bit delusional. (@maesetrovapoet on IG & tiktok)

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to say i miss you doesn't even begin to capture the despair your absence has brought me.

— mae s. (journal entry to the one i still love)

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sometimes in the spring, I sit on my front porch and I watch the birds. I think about the way you used to watch them standing in front of that big bay window drinking your coffee and it's a battle not to cry knowing the years have collected so quickly that none of the birds you once watched still breathe. a cardinal enjoys sitting on my chair — I know he is not you but part of me thinks he gets it. like he is missing someone too and I find a bit of comfort in the idea that maybe, just maybe, he is grieving one of the birds you used to feed, and together we aren't alone in our grief.

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What would I be if I had never learned silence, if my voice hadn’t been swallowed by fear so young, if every truth I tried to speak hadn’t been met with the weight of someone’s disappointment? What would I be if I hadn’t had to earn love by being small, by being good, by being quiet? I wonder what would remain of me if I had never had to apologize for existing, if I had grown up believing my softness was not a flaw, if I had been taught that anger could be holy, that I didn’t have to disappear to be forgiven. Would I still write about ache if I hadn’t spent my life trying to translate it? Would I still search for meaning in ruins if I had been allowed to build without fear of breaking? I wonder who I would have become if tenderness had been a constant instead of a miracle, if love had stayed long enough for me to believe it was real.

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when i think of my mother, she is standing by the window on an early morning smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee. the sunlight hits her face, and for a moment i can see everything she wants to forget about in her life.

my mother never meant to hurt me, but she doesn't know how to love me either. in theory, the idea of a daughter was magical. i could be everything she wasn't. she could love me the way her mother never loved her. i was meant to be her redemption, proof to her mother that she was easy to love but i became a mirror holding the reflection of all the parts of herself she can't stand looking at. i was not easy to love, i was difficult to just look at.

i learned early that love could sound like nothing. it could feel like being ignored, forgotten. i learned that just because you love me doesn't mean you like me. she wanted to like me, to adore me but her hands were too full to hold my heart. too full of grief, of holding her hatred for her mother's inability to love her, of the ache of being too much and never enough.

you were a storm, ma. and i was born in your rain. now every time i open my mouth i taste your sorrow. i forgive you, but i am so angry with you.

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i love you with intention, with purpose. i marched right up to you knowing i would love you right down to the bone, without limitations, and i laid my heart & soul down at your feet. there was nothing accidental about the way i fell in love with you, it was with faith that you were going to catch me and help steady my feet.

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i mother my grief the same way i used to mother my sister. i know it is not my responsibility to play this role but i cannot help but to hold its small, warm hands and whisper it's okay, i forgive you, every time it slaps me across the face when the emotions are too big for its delicate body.

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if the pain and the sorrow and the grief and all the aching you feel buried deep within your bones ever become too heavy, then let me carry some of the weight for you. let my ears listen to the tragedies of your life to relieve your heart the burden of carrying the knowledge alone. let my arms secure you so tightly you forget that you once felt like you would come apart at the seams. let me into your life, right into the messiest parts of it and let me help you sort the piles in every corner until you feel human again. oh, let me know you as well as you know yourself. let me in, let me in, let me in.

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you met a girl with burning rage and instead of trying to stomp her fury out, you held her flames in the palm of your hands unbothered by the sizzling of your skin.

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you walked into my life like you always belonged here. you stormed right past the walls built around my heart as if they were no match for you — a mere bump in the road, the bricks a small thing that begged to be torn down by your hands and you did not question the way i protected myself. you sat across from a woman scared of touch and caressed her soul, mind and spirit before you ever thought to reach for her body. you did not say the words i love you but you didn't need to — it poured from your heart right into mine.

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grief is not a gentle thing. it drags its sharp nails across my chest leaving bruises where no hand has ever touched. it is a phantom weight in every room, a chair that will never be filled by the same body again, a silence that hisses louder than thunder in july. i wear it like wet clothing — clinging to my skin, heavy with an invisible weight, impossible to peel away from my body. every laugh curdles in my throat, every breath tastes of what is missing. they say time heals but time only teaches you how to walk with a stone in your shoes, how to smile while choking on your blood. grief is not something you survive. it becomes the shadow that memorizes your shape. and still, i hold it close to my chest like a newborn child because to lose the grief would mean losing you twice.

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my grief claws at the same wound the way a cat scratches at a door, begging to be let in. it screams the same thing in torment: this is not the shape my life was meant to take.

and the world presses its cold palm against my mouth, laughs into the hollowness of my lungs and the sound bounces off my ribs, it speaks: but this is all you get.

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and when you raise your hand, wether in fury or frustration, i will snap at it the way a frightened dog bites at a child's hands and i will look at you with the same apologetic eyes, and i will hope forgiveness comes to you faster than the need for revenge.

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though you have left me as you found me, i am incapable of being what i was before you touched me. i will carry you on my skin, in my bones, in my mannerism, the jokes i tell, the laughter i share, in the way i fold towels now and the shampoo i have taken a liking to and the brands of cereal i have begun to keep in my pantry at all times. though you have left me, you remain apart of me. they say you are a mosaic of everyone you've ever loved and you take up the most of me.

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M.A;

it has been 3 years since we split and the ache remains the same. it has eased up, it allows me to breathe for a moment but not always. it still strangles me, only now it is no longer something i am able to anticipate. i meant what i said in my last letter — that i don't know if i am capable of loving someone else. i have been trying but my heart still bleeds your favorite color. i still favor your color eyes, i still listen to your music. i have not moved on from us despite making an effort to. god, i wonder if you miss me like this sometimes. if it nearly kills you somedays to know you will never hear my laughter again. i think this is healing — wondering, knowing, accepting. i love you. oh, how i still love you. but i no longer think you love me, and that doesn't bother me the way it used to.

— mae s.

[maesetrova]

i read a book recently where the main characters stop speaking after years of being each other's constant. they never move on, only ever wonder, always wish, always "i miss you, i hope you think about me" their way through life.

and it made me sick thinking about you because goddamnit, i miss you, and i hope you think about me.

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will I ever be able to look at my parents and not feel the weight of everything they could have been if it weren't for my existence?