There Are Days…

There are days when I want to curl up so deeply in the pockets of your bed that the light forgets I’m there. That my phone falls through the floor with the weight of unanswered texts about my whereabouts, that the incessant cloud of cyber world chatter doesn’t seem so oppressive, so pressing, so imminent. There are days I want to be forgotten by everyone but you, and listen to nothing but a special someone pouring words into the empty cracks of self-loathing dipping into and out of my body, scooped away by the inevitable spoon of growing up. There are days when I wish I truly felt that it was enough. That I intellectually could un-know that validation from a boy will never be as good as validating myself, will never be as good as that painfully fleeting moment of perfect contentment right before you realize you cannot hold on to this type of paradise, will never be as good as the story you create for a boy as your lips first touch, as your eyes first meet, before his inevitable flaws disappoint you. Knowing what doesn’t make you happy doesn’t mean you know what does.

There are days that I want to get so lost in the type of prose that makes you shiver with delight and heartbreak and ecstasy that I don’t know how people can get out of bed. How they move through life so carefree, when there is such beauty and pain yet undiscovered. There are days I can only weep, not just for the plethora of unspeakably sad atrocities that plague the world, but for the endless joys no one can possibly experience all of. There are days when all I want to do is lay under a thousand pages and hope that by the transitive property, or wet ink, or sheer force of will, the words soak into myself and without reading I can simply know and recite a thousand broken hymns that speak a thousand broken truths I didn’t know were in me.

There are days when I can do nothing but trace every menacing road of what ifs to their very bitter ends, my fingers flying down the pages, raising braille blisters in their wake. These are the days when the weight of every blessing feels like an anchor that if cut free would leave me floating too close to the sun. These are the days when I wish I didn’t love my family so deeply, love my friends so wholly, when every relationship feels like a person waiting to be lost. When every text is final and airplane turbulence a stone skipping to its dark resting place at the bottom of the lake. These are the days when I wish I was back in high school, when angst was less informed and had an end date, could be cured by drinking Dunkin on the floor of the secret bathroom with your partner in misery. These are the days we memorize, eulogize, but never repeat for fear of retreating into old patterns, old people.

There are days when a searing hot shower feels just as sensual as bare hands running down bare backs, thumb prints on hip bones. And days when no amount of scrubbing will wash away anything except for the salty film of sweat drying on your forehead, that, try as it might, did not erase the toxins you insist on putting in your body. There are days when I spend hours searching my naked body for evidence of the past, expecting a road map to materialize from freckles, bruising, and veins, expecting my sensitive skin to not be so secretive. These are not the days I want to curl up next to you, these are not the days I want to be seen by others, or lose myself in someone else. These are the days when I paint such rigid outlines of myself, that I am so aware of every facet of my being, that I can finally, unequivocally feel, enough – if only for that painfully fleeting moment.