𝙏𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙘: 𝘼𝙙𝙫𝙞𝙘𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙤 𝙜𝙚𝙩 𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙬𝙝𝙤 𝙞𝙨 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙙.
Which of your lives is this? Rotten elder-wood flowers surround your deathbed; a little death, a small death, a fractured moment – that is all that is given. Everything you wanted in the slice of liminal space between have and had. You listen for all the tell-tale signs of the impending crash, find nothing at first glance. You keep going back to make sense of it, of the end, of the everything, of the future that is now another notch on the bedpost. This tiny, frail death that curls its fingers the moment it was birthed.
Your mother sat by the window, hollowed out and frail, “what you wanted is an ever-shifting answer, today and tomorrow, and the day after have different ones. There’s no solution but to burn.“
That is the only time you understood her. That is the only time you wanted to stay under the same sky.
𝙏𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙘: 𝘼𝙙𝙫𝙞𝙘𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙤 𝙜𝙚𝙩 𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙤𝙙 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙬𝙝𝙤 𝙨𝙚𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙤𝙙 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙞𝙣 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙤𝙛 𝙬𝙖𝙮𝙨 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙖𝙡𝙬𝙖𝙮𝙨 𝙬𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙚𝙙 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪’𝙙 𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙪𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙙.
Call them a liar and a cheat. Call yourself an impostor and a fraud. Set the memories ablaze and push, push, push the guilt until it drowns. Make the someone misunderstood, make them a stranger in your memories. You write in red over black, retrace the outlines of the events past – pull, pull, pull the love until it drowns. Make yourself anew, if you burn everything down there is nothing left to mourn. There was nothing to understand and now there is nothing left to be understood.
If you put the past as past, you forget to be found and you forget to find.
Your father, outlined by the streetlamps during summer nights, the crisp serenade of cicadas encircling his voice, “are you sure you ever really understood?” He remains, as always, an enigma - at the end of the night there is only the faintest memory of his words. Easy to shake, easy to forget.
𝙏𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙘: 𝘼𝙙𝙫𝙞𝙘𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙤 𝙜𝙚𝙩 𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙨𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙚 𝙬𝙝𝙤 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨𝙣’𝙩 𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙧𝙫𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣.
When you burn all the memories and they haunt you. The slow realisation of loneliness; the bargaining that takes place as you rewrite everything you knew. You must cut in deep to dig out the rot; you must cut in deep to remake. Every muscle and sinew and bone – over and over again until they would not recognise you walking down the street.
When the other half of you rebels and prostrates, and you bargain with yourself – ask the questions of why and how. Why do they matter and how could they matter? How could they find the soft underbelly of your heart and carve into it ruthlessly?
When you turn the question inward, and there is only the bitter taste of loneliness behind, and all you can see is the empty shape they left behind on the mattress, the sheets.
Your best friend, tapping the dashboard of the car; a honda, red. Your sobs distilled from the silence between the questions. “No one deserves anything, we just get what we get. That’s all,” and those words are ice in the summer heat, twisting your gut.
𝙏𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙘: 𝘼𝙙𝙫𝙞𝙘𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙤 𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙥 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙢𝙖𝙮𝙗𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪'𝙡𝙡 𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙚𝙡𝙨𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙘𝙩 𝙨𝙤 𝙙𝙚𝙚𝙥𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 (𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙮𝙘𝙡𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙡𝙞𝙛𝙚 𝙨𝙖𝙮𝙨 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙢𝙖𝙮𝙗𝙚 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙞𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙙𝙤𝙣'𝙩).
Root around your closet. The worn-out sweater from high school that you keep despite never wearing, begin to search there. From the neat penmanship of your notes, where each assignment starts and ends.
With your fingers dug in deep you can pull. You must pull what you were before they came, you must find solace in the memory of before. What you were, what you are, what you could be.
The anger is always quickest to fade, you’ve always been prone to melancholy; blues and greys, rather than red. Opposites don’t attract, and you think, in retrospect, the silhouette left behind belonged to an opposite rather than an equal.
𝙏𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙘: 𝘼𝙙𝙫𝙞𝙘𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙤 𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙥 𝙝𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪'𝙡𝙡 𝙘𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙨 𝙥𝙖𝙩𝙝 𝙖𝙜𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙪𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚.
Nothing that leaves Pandora’s box returns.
You leave the search box open, blinking black bar beckoning you to try again.
Nothing that leaves Pandora’s box returns.
𝙏𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙘: 𝘼𝙙𝙫𝙞𝙘𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙤 𝙢𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙤𝙣.
It happens so gradually it might as well be a dream. The transition of one day to the next, and then one morning comes and there is no hollowed out you; there is no anchor tying you down to grief and the loneliness does not come after your first sip of tea.
There is the transition of summer into autumn and the silence of fall. You miss the sound of cicadas at night but you no longer think of your father’s smile, your mother’s tired face, and most importantly you no longer think of them. Their ghost does not haunt the doorways of your home.
But oh, oh, here is the secret that comes with the pull and the push; the hope and despair; the yearning and disgusting; yours is a memory that will not fade, and it will follow them to their grave.
- commission for @ocxnus || Eliot C. ||☕||