“I think I’m going to love you for a long time,” I told you once, and then ran out of the room on you, because you said nothing.
I told you, when I am afraid, I throw up. The stomach, you know, is higher up in your body than you are taught. Its not inside the belly but above that, under your rib cage. And the stomach is a whole other heart, and when the heart breaks, even from small things, the stomach does too. I’ve found that sometimes my stomach and heart form a team and I will ring the bowl with blood and bile trying to get the poison out.
You know I don’t believe in trying to control other people. You can, sometimes. And, you absolutely cannot. I don’t think things happen for a reason, as some say, there are reasons for things, I suppose, but you can never pin point them, the way things unravel. The bombs that are dropped suddenly onto your routine.
When you talk to me, every muscle in my mouth holds my lips together tightly so that I don’t scream, don’t you fucking dare take yourself away from this world. Don’t you dare disappear on me.
You would love me for a long time, when the sky wasn’t so lush behind you, when we could not romanticize traffic noise, and sleeping on the wooden floors, trying to get by, when the sky was so dull and grey it was hard to justify moving one foot in front of the other. Silence was the killer and I would have rather you blacked out my eyes.
Now the sky is staring at us, a blue so intense it burns, swallows us whole. You cannot turn away from it. A six month sunrise, an entire spectrum of colors you cannot name, like the color of snow at midnight, colors you cannot fully accept as real. I know you want to lead a vibrant life, a passionate life, where you feel every needle of every pine that you climb, every drop of sweat off every lover, sickeningly sweet to the public, or sick to your own stomach.
I know that you believe the possibility of being dead is much more realistic than the possibility of being great. That people will love you as dearly as you want them to only once you’re gone. And I think, you are probably right, the world loves you better dead, but you are still only a stranger.
