we sat at the table yesterday and traded our grief.
she dropped her i’m sorry like a neat, heavy coin,
and i laid mine down right next to it, polished and flat,
a perfect transaction of two people pretending
the table between us isn't split down the center.
the oranges sat between us, rotting in the bowl,
and neither of us reached for the rind.
at the end of the day, she's right.
i'm just a girl with an orange,
trying to peel back layers that
aren't ripe for me to touch.
she spent so long building that high stone wall,
scoffing at the smoke rising from my side of the kitchen,
that i don't know how to put out the fire anymore.
she says i shouldn’t have to pretend to be someone i’m not,
but the mask has been screwed into the bone for months,
and removing it now feels like tearing away my own skin.
and it's not your bad.
it's my bad, for letting the porcelain slip.
my bad for keeping this hidden account, this quiet ink,
this one square inch where the puppet gets to bleed.
where the puppet gets to write about the real her.
where the puppet gets to walk others through their pain.
(oh wait, she can't do that either as she's too concerned
trying to fix people— to make them her project
rather than seeing people as people.)
but it's still
my bad for creating an outlet,
and my bad for continuing to use it—
for ruining the peace by daring to have a voice
that doesn’t use your alphabet.
she didn't know what to do with my heavy weather,
she has too much on her own plate to carry my rot,
so her solution to the silence was to break the lock.
to invade the privacy, to uncover the words i keep,
turning my safe spaces into two more rooms on fire.
she wanted to see why the gold fruit tasted so bitter,
so she cut open my ribs to look at the seeds,
using them to plant a grove of her own.
it was never about the minutes between the messages.
it was about the gravity.
it was about how she consumes the entirety of my mind—
a constant, spinning orbit of how do i save her? is she okay?
and am i doing enough? can i do more?—
crying on the phone to the boy she fears will take her place,
making him call me while i spiral, unable to catch my breath,
and he's not even allowed to know why,
while i am not even a passing thought in her sky.
i am just a vessel to hold the stinging spray,
a fixture that isn't supposed to need a brace.
and the worst part is the truth whispered to me in the dark:
just because you are sick, doesn't give you the right to infect.
having a "broken" thing in your house is a uniquely quiet war.
i know she is hurting, i know the tunnel is dark for her,
i just wish i could get a handle on both of our problems,
(all of our problems,)
but life isn't fair.
and one of the many reasons she can't truly see me
is because if she knew the way i float out of myself,
if she saw the way the light completely leaves my eyes
or the ink i have to map onto my thighs just to stay present,
the feeling would cause her porcelain to shatter.
she sees the hairline cracks in my daily act,
but she misses the girl disappearing right in front of her.
she doesn't see the way i'm pulling away.
from her.
from him.
from everyone.
the way that i have to scream my "i love you's"
into the void, into texts, into poems,
just to make sure they get said.
to make sure that when the me they used to know
is nowhere to be found, there is still a trace
of the girl they used to "love".
here.
i wish she knew how hard i am trying to stay in the room.
how much i fucking care.
how hard i am trying to force the light back into my own face
just so she doesn't have to look at a corpse.
i am still trying to offer her the citrus,
even when own my hands are numb.
i am still peeling the fruit,
even when i'm not looking through my own eyes.
i am choosing to stand right here,
in the middle of the smoke,
but i am writing my own lines into the margin now.
i am keeping my ink.
i am keeping my safe space.
we are going to finish this script on my terms.