This time next week, I hope I will be breathing the air that I’ve been gasping for. I didn’t realize that four months could feel like four broken bones, two arms, two legs, all secretly cracked, only felt under the weight of my own invisible dread. It’s okay that I went back to being sixteen for awhile. It’s not what I wanted, what I planned for, but it’s what happened. I woke up with butterflies in my stomach and the rug ripped out from under me. My car sits in the driveway and I don’t drink coffee anymore because it makes me shake and I don’t know how to handle the shaking like I used to. I never used to worry about sharing drinks yet today I’ve washed my hands fifteen times and still don’t trust them. But it’s August and I’m twenty-three again. Or at least I will be when the key slides into the lock and I take that big gulp and pray for it to add a few years back that were taken away this summer. Everything is a circle cut in half, alternating between hollow and whole, snaking through time with hysterical pseudo endings and beginnings that are really just doors leading down a different hallway in the same ******* infinite hotel. Sometimes Wes Anderson’s, sometimes The Shining. I don’t have to listen to the yelling for the rest of my life if I don’t want to. I don’t have to be so unhappy if I don’t want to. Maybe next Saturday I will drive to the coffee shop on the corner and order something decaf and sugary and thank god that it’s over. It’s over. *******. The leaves will be turning orange soon. I almost forgot.

The power, the title, the throne, the crown
All means nothing without you to keep me warm

The glory, the war, the army, the victory
Still, your heart was the most precious I’ve won

The cold, the grief, the numbness, the pain
If only you have come to ease a little of them

Don’t you know, my love?
I would’ve walked away from it all,
Would’ve stayed a thousand years far from here
If you had only asked

A house with a red door, lemon trees outside
The mundane things I have long desired

But you stood on my downfall,
Yet I have looked at you
As if the sun shines just through your eyes

You, the one I have loved and chose,
Have failed me the most

A bit of hope, a lot of love
Gone were they
When a dagger was pierced through my heart