dearest stranger,

i am too abstract now for my own good. i feel and hold myself, in place, in my hands and i slip right through like sunlight, like tiny moth scales, like the delusions of a sauntering ghost, like all things unreal and untouchable, like a madwoman, laughing away in her free fall to an unsteady ground.

and all the flowers are cheering in their surreal, psychedelic scarlets, and all the rocks are breaking, and all the words are failing to capture what i truly feel.

am i still despairingly corporeal, like paper napkins and panes of glass? am i still in actual flesh, now that god doesn't exist? am i still as tangible as this last, frantic breath of a letter?

am i still actually here?

bidding my farewell now,
ginia

unzip my wrists —
fragile, handle with care.

i am drunk with the thought of them breaking,
resembling quartz veins
down in the mines.

unzip my arms,
this is an enclosure —
it is safe from all-seeing eyes.

unzip my skin —
i am bag of sorrows and bones
waiting to be unpacked
in a new rental room.
the walls are white; the sheets are clean; the flowers are fresh
and i sit in the middle of it all:
a slashed, opened mail
spilling shadows —
like a ghost inside a house.
a parasite inside a host.

unzip my body:

i am strikingly
all things
anti-thetical —
old
dark
ugly
haunted —
a herald of infestation —
here:

the walls are white; the sheets are clean; the flowers are fresh,
the sunset is warm — comforting.
the world spins in a blur.
and i sit quietly, in apprehension,
stuck in the middle of it all.

a ghost.
a prey.

the room is spotless —
i step out of my skin.

Where do I start in letting you go?

It's not in the ruminations. All they'll long for are simpler, purer times, back when loving me was everything you ever knew — back when sighing your name didn't hurt. Now it's a whisper, settling on the ground long after the woodsmoke has stopped lingering. Now, it's just a memory settling deep in an open wound.

And love, where do I start in letting you go? My hands are still bruised from writing poems, when you already were handing me crumpled paper roses — all etched with endings I was afraid to write. The moment you kissed her lips, did you already let me go? Now here on my shoulder rests the weight — the mess of it all. Tell me, what do I do with these words, falling helplessly on my lap? What do I do with all this hurting? What do I do with all this love?

And where do I start in letting you go, when my shaking hands still refuse to confront your absence? When my throat still refuses to abandon all yearning — a wounded huntress that still screams for the moon. And I'd hoped it is easier to stop loving you after your skin had been tainted by her lips, ghosting gently — forming into the sweetest of smiles.

And I'd hoped it is easier to stop loving you after you had drowned August's promises against her hair when you'd deepen your kiss — after you had surrendered September's 4 a.m.s, November's love letters, December's midnight rains, January's stove-lit dances, February's moonlit walks, March's Irish teas and solitude, and April's quiet peace — all of it, spoiled, in the name of her kiss. Now all of it — in ruins, lying, waiting patiently for a can of worms, burrowing their way into everything I held dear.

Rome didn't burn down in a day. I wish I would. I wish we would; what's left in ruins won't ever hurt.

And so love,
where do I start in letting you go?




// "Tell me all the ways of letting you go."

it's almost midnight and i'm drowning in every ******* poem i ever wrote for you — in every ******* poem you'll no longer read.

Maybe it's all still here, like storms made of bruises and the relics of Carthage under siege. Here, like the laments of a Sunday morning while staring back at tragic eyes. Maybe it's all here, somewhere in this layer of skin beneath the white lines on your wrists. Now the blade just feels like another stranger coming home at 4 a.m.

It was right here in the bones of a girl that once was made of sunlit blunders and curiosities; if you dig deep enough, you might exhume the remains of what she used to be — all purple vervains and the poems she swallowed whole.

Oh, that cruel, cruel joke of delicate things, still withering at the wake of storms such as yourself. Has no one cared enough to tell you that maybe, this isn't what getting better looks like? Maybe you just learned how to seem less messed up.