Seeing you looms over me like a storm cloud.
Because as time drags on, the knots in my stomach only get tighter, anticipating your lightning.
The pounding in my head gets louder as your words bounce around in my ears, clashing in the corners of my mind, shaking me like thunder rumbling.
I took four showers today and no matter how hot I made the water, it couldn't out-burn the trails your fingertips left on my skin, and no matter how cold I made the water, it couldn't numb my feelings.
I refuse to look in the mirror because I'm afraid of what I'll see.
I can plug my ears and scream at the top of my lungs, but I can't drown out your voice.
And I can put on perfume, but your smell is in my car from when we last drove together.
I can sleep, but I can't help but feel that something's missing and I know that it's you, your cool drizzle of a midnight rain.
And it's hard to breathe when I think about you. But it went from taking my breath away to knocking the wind out of me.
And I can feel the tears streaming down my cheeks but I don't want to see them because they are white flags of my weakness.
This feels like the first shot of whiskey without a chaser, burning on the way down, settling into a warmth that fills my stomach, but by the end of the night, I am as cold and empty as the overturned glass you left on the counter.
My father says he thinks our house is haunted, but I don't think the house is haunted by ghosts, I think it's the people inside the house that haunt our home. We float in and out of the building like leaves catching the wind, coming and going and never really settling in to stay, always anticipating the next get up and go, because the feeling of home is get up and gone.
The memories that hold us down, we can choose to let go.
So, I will dust the cobwebs from the corners, and open up the blinds.
I will shatter the shot glass and pour out the whiskey.
Despite the haunted house, my father teaches me every day to be more than my memories. To be more than the ghosts that haunt my mind.
I will learn again to be unbroken.
My body is not a battlefield anymore, so I will dig the bullets from the dirt.
I will return scratched up swords to their sheaths.
All weapons back to the armory.
I do not want them.
My body, she has seen bruises.
She has seen cuts and scratches, she has felt waves of nausea that carried her into the night.
She, her. We name the most devastating destructors and most magnificent masterpieces, she.
She is not a cemetery.
She is not a hospital.
She is a sanctuary.
And she is a church.
She is a shelter.
She is refuge from your storms.
Her walls have seen sadness and sorrow, anger and pain, joy and ecstasy.
She is, in the most basic vocabulary,
Home.
From here on out, she will not shake in your storms, and never again, will she be haunted.
