“And you decide to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots”
of the heart where I have roots”
When did I lose us?
And I know I should try to get it back, that sharp black and tragic vine around us. And I know I should lay my lips against his ear and whisper like the sea on the shore. And I know I should look deep into that dark bright eyes and tell him how much I missed him (how even with blood splatted across my skin like rain and dandelion seeds each breath stung with a memory of him).
I should do a million things but the one thing I do.
I pull away.
I pull away and it feels like cutting arcane patterns into my heart with a rusted knife. And I try not to let it leak into my eyes when I look at my reflection in his own. “Oh,” it comes out like a sigh I have forgotten to swallow. Being with him is like remembering, for the first time, that I have been a blade for long so that I have forgotten how to break my heart, and shatter my soul, and press seeds into his spine like promises. I wonder if any of the ones I left there have started to root down into the marrow and dirt of him.
Or has he cut them out, each memory and seed and promise, like thorns?
“Was coming back exactly what you hoped it would be?” And I know my voice is darker than it should be, spice and smoke instead of jasmine and gold. I know and I cannot stop the way each word catches on my teeth like a small stone. My jaw aches like I've been holding on to a frayed rope for so long I have forgotten how to let go.
And I try now, to let it go with a smile, as all the quartz around our shadows turns to emeralds and pale-gray stone (like bones buried for an eon). “There is nothing for you to do now.” I do not tell him that I am broken, that I am shattering endlessly, that I have forgotten how to love him in the ways that I should.
I do not tell him that I am bloated with sorrow because he left me there on a shore where all my horrors and nightmares lived.
He. Left. Me.
I have only ever asked him to come and stay.
“Have you learned how to be happy yet, Michael?” The words come out like another tangle of sighs and heartbreaks, and good-bye, good-bye, good-bye. But I hope he's learned how to do something other than run, because he has never learned it for me.
I pray for it.
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