i am twenty one years old and i have forgotten what it was like to not want to be dead. the sun is bright and the air is summer-warmed and i wrap myself in the quiet and try to remember how to breathe.
i do not know how to love myself. i am too harsh, too unkind; i speak to myself like an unwanted stranger. ive used kinder words, of late, soft praises, appreciative glances. i do not know how to love myself, but i am learning.
i still think about you, sometimes, catching a glimpse of the cards on my wall with your handwriting scrawled on the insides, cheerful
i wonder what you are doing, if you are happy- i wonder if the world is treating you better than you ever managed to treat me.
i wish you the best i really do i hope someone out there has made the effort to love you like i did to give you back all of your smiles that you gave me
i am told that i will live to see my thirtieth birthday my thirty-second, if i'm lucky. the statistics are stacked against me, and it's hard to build a future when you will die in ten years, a decade of waiting. it's hard to dream when you are a countdown.
my fear is a tangible thing. it is the amorphous monster under my bed or in my closet (depending on the telling) its the goodbyes never said and the emptiness where someone used to be. my fear is that little voice in the back of my head, whispers, you know youre too much and you know youre not enough. my fear is the hope that i have or have had or will have and it is the way that hope will eventually fail me.
rage red hot: leaving me alone again you promised melts into resignation deep blue like the sea: knew this would happen not worth much of anything am i?
i am something fragile, something to be wrapped in newspaper and stored in a box in the attic for next use. "handle with care" is scrawled along my ribs in shaky sharpie hand, over my hollow bones and translucent skin.