HOW DOES IT FEEL? LOVE? you ask me with a smile glistening brighter than the daylight across my collarbone and my insides turn warm to the point where there is melted calcium in place of my bones and the only thing holding my sticky skin together is your embrace. i don't know what love is. it sounds like a plasticized promise i'd make from behind the marbled edge of a juliet balcony to a girl who tastes like the tail end of a sleepy, mid-morning daydream. it feels like a hiss that claws off my heart until the blood in me is running just as wild as my thoughts when you lean in and focus on my red wine lips. love reminds me of your trembling voice when you read your favorite poem out loud to me while i hum to the slosh of the streamlet beneath our dangling legs. love tastes like my name on your lips.
HOW DOES IT FEEL? GUILT? you ask me, sipping a strawberry milkshake casually, fingers pinching the light pink straw. how does guilt feel? i repeat in a high-pitched voice and my eyes fall to the fabric of my cotton white dress. i fiddle with its laced end, the one that has lipstick stains from an age-old, jolly time. guilt feels like a lack of everything that has been caused by me. it's my skin bunching around my eyes because i'm trying so hard to hold in delirium every time you ask what's wrong. it's me, i'm wrong. guilt feels like thinking of you lying alone in a bed made for two. it's the pathetic attempt i make to sneak in after you've fallen asleep, managing to break the bedside mirror that captured your reflection weeping for the last one hour. guilt is a need for thrill that reduces everyone to a tiny speck against the sloping background of this play, where i'm the starring as my usual glittery-eyed self. it sounds like someone plucking your heartstrings to the tune of gloomy sunday and me dancing to it.
HOW DOES IT FEEL? MISERY? you ask me and i don't get time to answer because you're leaving already, driving away in your old chevy impala ─ and there, you're gone. misery feels like seeing the two ticks against my texts turn just as blue as my day. it feels like tripping up on the sidewalk and trying to walk with a bleeding knee, blinking back tears, and wiping blood-stained hands on torn denim while a thousand passersby stare with their beady gaze. misery is a 30-second long supercut of all those self-destructive decisions dipped in a solution of 43% paranoia and 57% panic that led me to this blinding spot. it feels like ligaments coming off and leaving behind a stiff framework of bones that collapses as soon as i try to run away again. misery is a chronic pain residing my skull, afraid of the monster pounding in the cavity of my chest. it feels like the sky crashing down on my frail body because atlas refused to hold it anymore. misery is all i am, i want to tell you but you're not picking up the phone.
─ HOW DO YOU MOURN THE LOSS
OF A LOVE YOU NEVER SPOKE OUT LOUD,
NEVER FELT WITH YOUR OWN HANDS?
(shelby eileen)
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