Traveler.
(Delilah; listening, 2023)
The chime of bluebells fades as I travel back to where I am.
To where I should be.
To where I should stay.
My bed is hosting a body, my body, an enclave covered in sheets & drapes, stacks of paperbacks, piles of clothes, dirty and clean, and heaps of stuffed animals. I can’t sleep without the weight of the world gently pressing me back down into the earth. Weighted blankets aren’t enough to make me feel safe.
The only light is the warm glow of the garage lights cutting through the cracks in the blinds. The only sound is the continuous exhale of the house’s ventilation masking the occasional creaking of the walls and floor.
I was gone before I woke up, somewhere far away in my history, searching for the whispering shrines I’d built to salvage the shrapnel we’d left behind. Eager to travel once more, I turn to my side and pull the veil of your ghost around my trembling arms, laying a fragile hand on my belly, trying to forget, to soothe the ache that has settled there for decades, and I try to replace it with your scent.
Sometimes I need to remember how I died to remember how I found myself again. I died in your arms, but not in the way I’d always dreamed I would.
It wasn’t pretty.
I wasn’t mended.
Your violence swallowed pieces of me I never got back.
I became infinitesimal hoping the pain would shrink with me.
The threads of memory tangle in my throat. The butterflies in my stomach have turned into mourning doves. My skin lights up in places I’d condemned.
You weren’t alone.
You were the catalyst.
When you left me on that forsaken January 2nd, I rose from the ashes you called confetti as my embers fizzled out. My skin was stained with the soot of your touch, the tar that coats your lips, the resounding pulse of your words against the back of my neck.
I thought everyone could see.
I thought everyone could see how I’d been looted, pillaged.
So when they stayed silent, that, I guess, was when I truly died.
I’ve been living in exile from my own body.
Traveling from barren landscapes to echoing seas to empty palaces, the me that lies in my own bed every night is the shell of a vagabond soul, seeking peace in places that don't exist.
I seek peace in places that don't exist.
And that, love, has everything to do with you.
Every “I’m sorry” hums in my ears.
Every embrace.
I haven’t given a genuine hug since.
Silence.
And tears melt away time as my heart throbs for someone who doesn’t even exist anymore.