Some days have no sweetness to them. You can douse them in honey and they will still be black coffee and raw kale. The days you put the TV on mute in the background just so everything doesn't feel so static.
Some nights there is only unrest. Only tossing between ache and numbness. Ricocheting between stillness and hysteria. They bolted my balcony door shut and tell me it’s only for a few months. I have nightmares about what would happen if there was a fire – how could I jump if I needed to? They say that type of situation is unlikely, but they don’t know how flammable my life is.
The girl on my shoulder, I let her have the floor for a minute and immediately regret it. She starts shrieking in my ear for all the times I stayed level-headed when I could have detonated. She tells me she shot herself in the foot each time I swallowed my anger – she can’t wear shoes anymore. She tells me I almost killed her turning the scraps into gifts and handing them back to people like an offering. I try to interrupt her and she goes into a fit. Stop making excuses for treating everyone else with more humanity than yourself.
I want to throw myself into the puddle right here in this pothole. Strip down my wet clothes in the middle of the street, drop them at your feet, and walk away. I could hang sheets and shirts from windowsills and watch the storms shred them. I need a road trip where I can stop in diners to dump the crumbs of myself on empty plates. The crumbs that collected in a messy pile in the back of the toaster tray. The bits of me that I forgot about, lost track of time with, and let char.
When the mailman walks by, I want to slip my notebooks in his bag and let him deliver them to strangers. I hope he delivers one to you, and if you don’t cry, I will. I want to put my hands on a plane and crash them into the side of a mountain. I want to leave my skin out to dry and half-heartedly go back to check on it and then pretend to be surprised when it’s gone. I want to sit in the back corner of a coffee shop and put my life on time-lapse. I want the moment you come in and sit down at the table to slip by in a blur of espresso and almond milk.
These are all metaphors for the ways I don’t want you to know me anymore.
Sometimes you want something to make sense so desperately that you trip a switch in your brain. Sometimes you can lose yourself trying not to be unlosable. Sometimes you need to run away from where you think the answer is to find out there is no answer.
I think about the time I ran away from home on the coldest night of the year. It was too cold to cry and the only way my muscles wouldn’t freeze was to keep running. I could feel my pulse everywhere. I made it 3 miles before my dad picked me up in the car. I think about that every time it starts getting colder out. Except now it’s your heartbeat that I feel in my feet. You told me to write about that. I don’t think this is what you meant.