Jul 2014
You don't think I understand.
That was the last thing you said to me before I found out you had taken the easy route, the one where the only ticket available to purchase is a stomach full of sleeping pills.
I tried so ******* hard to understand after that, because that was the only note you thought to leave me. Whether on purpose or by accident, I took it more to heart than your absence, anyway.
You never really left. You hid behind my ear and over my shoulder so for a long time, before I got used to seeing your reflection behind me in the bathroom mirror like in a cheesy horror flick, I was constantly dizzy because of all the whirling around. A mixture of fear and excitement, tasting something like stomach bile and the lemons that were on your breath no matter what the time of day, would prepare me to meet you, or rather the lack of you. If the acidic solution wasn't used up on a kiss to your cold and rotting lips, it burned a hole at the base of my stomach that grew into a volcanic crater.
Maybe that was why I erupted so many times that autumn, my mouth burning and smoking before blowing bits of my top into the atmosphere. I lost so much of me in those natural disaster moments. I lost my mind with my temper and raved too often to be trusted. I was called a lunatic because I saw you outside of the photos and family videos your mother showed me after your disappearance.
She was the only one who didn't avoid me; quite the opposite. She clung to me because I was the last physical link to you, no matter how dishonest that connection was. I was as lonely as she.
Slowly, though, slowly, I forgot to look for you in the shadows and behind ocean waves, and I forgot what you looked like breathing deeply in and out with your limbs sprawled out and occupying my entire bed, and I forgot how you licked your lips before pressing them to mine, every time. I couldn't find you anymore except for in the memories haunting the flowers you gave me on our first dinner date, the one I asked you to, pressed between the pages of the one book we agreed would be our favorite, or in the quickly-fading scent you left in all the sweaters your mother dumped on me the moment she moved to Thailand after her messy divorce.
But I can't say I don't want to lose you; I don't have anything left of yours to lose. I lost you long before your accidental suicide note. I lost you when the plants littering your apartment, the ones I gifted you, started wilting because you lost interest in other things' lives trying desperately to find purpose in your own. I lost you when you traded your guitar in for an attempt to find sanity and when you broke every one of your CD's, your most prized possessions, one night in a fit of rage against unfairness and bad luck and life in the universe.
Most of all, though, I lost you completely when you ripped up the Polaroid exposures you had taken of me one night when we finally believed that love was real, and that we were in it. When I asked you why, you only suggested I leave.
That was the night you told me I didn't understand, and I'm only just started to realize that you were right, and that I will never understand. I will never understand your cryptic, poetic responses. They're romantic as heck sometimes, but other times, all I want is a straight answer. I hate the way you would save pictures of me sneezing, or talking, or doing something ugly and dumb. You may have told me I was beautiful doing those things, but lying does not make me love you more. I was far too gone for that. I hated your slow and rolling hips, your lazy grace, all the things that a romance novel might describe as **** and utterly perfect, but when we were in a hurry, they were so inconvenient.
I could feel bad about saying these behind your back, but when I say I cannot wait to forget you completely, it is only a little bit a lie. I've found it so much easier to write about someone you love, whether the unrequited type or the type so romantic your heart swells to a grapefruit size after he says yes and is so ******* romantic it stays that size for a year after, after they've died, only the feeling isn't euphoria anymore but that of suffocating as the heart presses against the throat and slowly drowns you.
These words stem from the extra heart parts I had to cut out to survive, and while I am left stoic-faced and cold, I can finally fly.
That was the last thing you said to me before I found out you had taken the easy route, the one where the only ticket available to purchase is a stomach full of sleeping pills.
I tried so ******* hard to understand after that, because that was the only note you thought to leave me. Whether on purpose or by accident, I took it more to heart than your absence, anyway.
You never really left. You hid behind my ear and over my shoulder so for a long time, before I got used to seeing your reflection behind me in the bathroom mirror like in a cheesy horror flick, I was constantly dizzy because of all the whirling around. A mixture of fear and excitement, tasting something like stomach bile and the lemons that were on your breath no matter what the time of day, would prepare me to meet you, or rather the lack of you. If the acidic solution wasn't used up on a kiss to your cold and rotting lips, it burned a hole at the base of my stomach that grew into a volcanic crater.
Maybe that was why I erupted so many times that autumn, my mouth burning and smoking before blowing bits of my top into the atmosphere. I lost so much of me in those natural disaster moments. I lost my mind with my temper and raved too often to be trusted. I was called a lunatic because I saw you outside of the photos and family videos your mother showed me after your disappearance.
She was the only one who didn't avoid me; quite the opposite. She clung to me because I was the last physical link to you, no matter how dishonest that connection was. I was as lonely as she.
Slowly, though, slowly, I forgot to look for you in the shadows and behind ocean waves, and I forgot what you looked like breathing deeply in and out with your limbs sprawled out and occupying my entire bed, and I forgot how you licked your lips before pressing them to mine, every time. I couldn't find you anymore except for in the memories haunting the flowers you gave me on our first dinner date, the one I asked you to, pressed between the pages of the one book we agreed would be our favorite, or in the quickly-fading scent you left in all the sweaters your mother dumped on me the moment she moved to Thailand after her messy divorce.
But I can't say I don't want to lose you; I don't have anything left of yours to lose. I lost you long before your accidental suicide note. I lost you when the plants littering your apartment, the ones I gifted you, started wilting because you lost interest in other things' lives trying desperately to find purpose in your own. I lost you when you traded your guitar in for an attempt to find sanity and when you broke every one of your CD's, your most prized possessions, one night in a fit of rage against unfairness and bad luck and life in the universe.
Most of all, though, I lost you completely when you ripped up the Polaroid exposures you had taken of me one night when we finally believed that love was real, and that we were in it. When I asked you why, you only suggested I leave.
That was the night you told me I didn't understand, and I'm only just started to realize that you were right, and that I will never understand. I will never understand your cryptic, poetic responses. They're romantic as heck sometimes, but other times, all I want is a straight answer. I hate the way you would save pictures of me sneezing, or talking, or doing something ugly and dumb. You may have told me I was beautiful doing those things, but lying does not make me love you more. I was far too gone for that. I hated your slow and rolling hips, your lazy grace, all the things that a romance novel might describe as **** and utterly perfect, but when we were in a hurry, they were so inconvenient.
I could feel bad about saying these behind your back, but when I say I cannot wait to forget you completely, it is only a little bit a lie. I've found it so much easier to write about someone you love, whether the unrequited type or the type so romantic your heart swells to a grapefruit size after he says yes and is so ******* romantic it stays that size for a year after, after they've died, only the feeling isn't euphoria anymore but that of suffocating as the heart presses against the throat and slowly drowns you.
These words stem from the extra heart parts I had to cut out to survive, and while I am left stoic-faced and cold, I can finally fly.
