I Want To Learn To Love Like You

I was told I needed to learn to sit with my grief. to hold its hand and mother it. to allow it to exist within me.

But I don't think I can mother anything, not even myself. I sit beside my grief, hand in hand. We're staring at each other. both wondering why we're here.

I want to know what you hold close when your feeling empty

I want to know what you claw together and stuff into your empty chest like cotton in a corpse.

When your numb and dead and there's nothing left what keeps your shape?

Is it worth it, This thing your clinging to?

Does it make you more human? Does it break the numbness?

When every piece of you is dead and gone what should I expect?

Don't you just hate it when you get the chance to talk. Like finally talk for the first time in forever. And you know it's been a while since you started but everyone else talks all the time so what if you go on for a while. But now people are changing the subject and the conversation is rolling naturally in another direction like conversations are supposed to do. But you weren't done and you can't move the conversation backwards so you just get quiet. Quiet like you always are. And you don't know how long it's gonna be this time before you can talk again.

I got good at leaving; but I'm asking you to stay.

These words have been with me for so long they aren't easy to say.

I'm afraid if I speak them to the empty air there won't be anything left of me.

I haven't tried before; I just watched them leave.

So I'm hoping this time, if I give these words to you.

You'll take their place in my chest and say you love me too.

I hope I'm one of the things you hold close when your feeling empty

There's a strength in the palms of my hands.

And I sit in awe of it.

A short lifetime of climbing my way up and through.

Gifted and abused are my fingers.

Peppered with calluses and scars.

And I find I like it, this simple fact about myself.

It could have been true of a lot of people.

But in this moment it is my truth

Sometimes when two people are broken in the same way their jagged edges fit together

Sometimes I feel it behind my eyes. Like a pressure. Just reminding me that it's there. An acknowledgement.

But rarely does it bloom into that sad wet thing.

Running hot down my cheeks.

I've never been someone who cries much.

But then again I've never had much to cry about.

Just never had much.

Crying over nothing. The lack. The absence never made sense to me.

There is a feeling. A sadness. But no tears.

I wish. God I wish.

You'd give me something to cry about.

Wanna feel that release.

Long ago I accepted that my mind would always outrun my body. It would be an exhausting existence but one I could ultimately cope with. I spent all of my youth studying for it, how to live with my own mind. How to make room for it in my life. I looked it in its wild eyes as it promised it would never be tamed. And that was fine. I swallowed my dread determined to live anyways. To perservere.

I was unprepared for my body to start lagging further behind. I should still be young. Barely an adult. But my body is degrading around me nonetheless My joints creak and ache, my muscles fall slack and weak. I can't carry the weight I could before. I cannot hold a knife correctly to cut my vegetables, I can't even muser up enough strength to stand throughout the day. Always having to stop and catch my breath.

My mind is only getting faster and more unruly as it grows but my body is quickly becoming infirm. I worry the two halves of my existence will pull me apart refusing to live together.

What will become of me when I am abandoned by both?

It drips and splatters over her forearms. Crusting along each delicate finger joint and congealing where it packed into the curve of each cuticle. Painting her skin gray like the dust of age and time.

It drips onto her shoes and stains the hem of her shirt. It falls in spinning splatters to soak the denim of her jeans in thick drops.

In this mess, she gives birth to something new. There, by the potter's wheel.