Are.

People don’t change. There isn’t a spin that reveals a girl ready for a ball. The white mouse isn’t going to become a steed. We are who we are and it is a lovely thing.

As we learn who we are there are little layers chipped into the years of our lead based paint. We find corners and wallpapers we love and sometimes hate. We always were a finished house with hundreds of new turns to take. Hundreds of layers of paint.

We don’t turn into a hero or a villain. Those characters have always lived in our skin. We find them, we choose them, we discover all the characters within.

I don’t want to be a new person in the morning. I’ll keep chipping away at the paint. I’ll keep remodeling and learning. I don’t want a mouse that becomes a great white steed.

We are who we are and it is the most adventurous thing.

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Take Me.

There’s something about a blank page and a full moon. Something about the electricity in the air between me and you.

Excitement and hope. Something about this moment feels completely new. Rope down the moon, dusted off stars, the cosmos align for who we are.

Jumping off cliffs, swimming treacherous depths, following ambiguous seas with you is as all in as it can get.

Take these moon soaked eyes and freckled skin. Take the loose lipped laughter and toe curling sins.

Take me under with those honey sweet eyes. Take me under and lets never say goodbye.

Grave digger.

I went grave digging and fell in the hole. I went grave digging and cast aside my soul.

I shoveled deep into the dirt. I found more than skeletons and I never knew this kind of hurt.

Throw the earth over my shoulder, dig frantically with my hands, wild like a dog, broken by man.

Deep in that trench I’ve lost my surroundings. The compass doesn’t work and I feel pieces inside me crumble into hiding.

Sliding down wet earth into what I know will break me. I’ve dug up truths that have been buried deep. I’m not falling apart, I’m already apart, I’m just making it too messy to keep.

I’m looting the graveyard and become sick when I dig too far. I’m just flesh and bones, broken and ruined, crying to be pulled out and taken home.

Natalie.

Have I told you lately that I love you?

Have I reminded you that I value you more than I let on?

Have I told you I think you are precious, irreplaceable, the most tender of songs?

You are.

You are kind and you are thoughtful. You care so deeply you are always digging scars deep into your own flesh.

You feel everyone’s pain so much you often ignore your own needs. You simply forget.

Stay you, darling, stay you. Your insides are more beautiful when you remember all the battles you’ve been through.

Sometimes you forget to be kind to you. To treat yourself like your mother would do. Like your father or your nieces. Love yourself like they do. Don’t forget to.

Have I told you lately I love you?

You are amber droplets dazzling the trees. You are summer winds inspiring someone somewhere to just jump in.

You are hot nights on mountain tops, following dreams and not condemning those who are not.

Don’t forget, darling, you are perfectly you. Sometimes you need to remind yourself that because no one can love you like you need to do.

Dear Fear,

Dear Fear, how did we end up here? When did we let letting go tarnish our crystalline halls? When did we invite the uninvited to batter our walls?

How did we become unseen to each other and when did we start looking for better cover?

When did did our names become synonymous and interchangeable? How did we not notice the turning table?

We hold fast to each other in once familiar hallways, now littered with skeletons we step over to get away.

We stumble past the threshold clawing for more air. It’s been hard to breath with dust filled air.

Dear Fear, how did we ever get here? How did we so quietly become the same?

Sweet Fear, I’m taking back my name.

Unprepared.

These heavy clouds are gray and full, not following me but completely darkening my world.

Bursts of rain tricked me into thinking it was the worst. I’ve been wet before. I’ve been hurt.

But these clouds rumble all around shaking the very trees and forewarning me. These heavy clouds can’t hold back the catastrophic pour. I feel it coming and I can’t hold it back anymore.

I’ve used my rain boots, my umbrella, I’ve stayed covered. This one threatens to drown like no other.

I’m racing for the high ground, shoes laced tight, a half functioning heart. I’m running from the sound, no hope in sight, this is the hardest part.

It will rain. It will pour. I’m trying to get higher so I don’t have to drown anymore.

Rewrite. Erase.

I replay it them rewrite it in my head. I keep the parts I love and erase and rewrite what make a me cry in my bed.

I keep the arms that held me warm and safe. I’d keep the eyes that dripped honey and lips I loved to taste.

I’d keep that chortle that filled my heart. The big hands that held mine and traced all of my curves in perfect arcs.

I’d rewrite the words he used. I’d scribble over when he turned cold. I’d change the callous demeanor into the times he made me feel like home.

I don’t think a heart can handle a quake quite like this. I don’t think they are made much for the size of this fissure.

I’d rewrite your earthquake to be more gentle so we would not break.

I’d keep those sunset eyes and boyish smile. I’d erase, I’d rewrite, just to feel okay after awhile.

Bitch.

I went to a domestic abuse website to confirm that I wasn’t crazy. I’m not. He fit the descriptions I let slide and I realize being ashamed is a waste of my time.

It isn’t an organic feeling. Shame. It’s what society thinks we should feel. I can be relieved, hurt, but I don’t need to feed myself shame for my meals.

The little wedges that made up the ‘abuse’ wheel were little shards depicting who I knew I was with. We all lose ourselves, sometimes, but I won’t be ashamed of this.

Of course he hates me now, I’m not the wilted petal he had pressed in his book. This was a horror story that I let go in hopes no one else would look.

Funny how reading about what I already knew made me calm. It made me okay. Funny how something so sick made me sane.

Strange how what was so comfortably familiar was something cruel. But here we are and I am free. I won’t feel ashamed of what I let someone else make me be.

A bitch, I hear. But being a bitch doesn’t sound so bad to me.

 

 

He said.

‘I don’t love you’, he said.

He meant to say that he doesn’t love my independent streak.

He meant to say, ‘I don’t love myself.’

He meant to say he didn’t love that I didn’t fill his void.

He meant to say that if I could forget my fear and continue doing whatever he says then he could keep the farce going.

He meant to say, ‘Why do you get upset when I pretend not to care and call you a petty bitch?”

He meant to say he is desperately lonely and the shadows choke him at night and all the pills and smoke won’t light the way like my warm body did.

He meant to say he was furious that my standards for behavior aren’t low anymore and that he doesn’t want strive to be better. That if he can’t control me he doesn’t want me.

He meant that he’s angry I see how he has been controlling me and that I won’t let it continue.

He meant to say he doesn’t want to do it all alone and is upset and scared.

‘I don’t love you’, he said.

That’s not what he meant.