Hello To All That
I am linked to the madness of you. Here is why you do not mean anything to me. You mean chaos and madness and pain and hurt, and here is why you do not mean anything. You mean everything.
I have become a tea girl. Late nights mean up-lates because the caffeine rush never rushes, but Baby, does it drone on. And here’s the thing about late nights up with the those leaves and that smell swirling around in my head. I am left with the imprint of you in between my lips and legs. Do you understand that I cannot write about this. Do you understand that it is more than words have ever allowed me to give because Baby, Kid, we are too powerful against ourselves when it comes to loving. We will destroy sooner than we will love, and Baby, you were always the jumpiest. Always the impatient go-getter. I just went along with it.
Do you understand that destruction is easier than gentleness. Do you understand that it is miles easier to crush and smash than it is to touch and graze. Your touch and your graze left marks. I tried to measure up, and Baby, could I only try. I was breathless from the hurt of you. Do you understand that you are the pain that I can never face without moving inside myself and not coming out for hours. Hours, Baby. If I could trace your name across my cheek I would never graze. There would be blood and I would cry for the first time in months. Because this is how I feel when I turn towards the fullness that used to leak from your fingers. You were full and you were emptying so goddamn fast. Baby. I had to place my body beneath your leaking figure to catch every last drop because Baby, Kid, you were wasting away, and I was running out of breath to catch up. I was running out of breath and out of room and I’m not sure if we were moving at the same pace or if you were always fire and I was always air, waiting to blow you out.
The nights when I curled into your valley of a chest were the nights I felt the warmest, even in that terrible July heat wave. Even then, I shivered. There was a morning in which you woke me because I shook with such urgency. Such urgency. Did I dream of it then, Baby? What you would give to me when the air became dry? When my mouth became dry? When your bones became cold and you had no warmth left to wrap around my waist. When I began to drown in my own imagination of you. A whole mess of waves of you, you, you—not leaking but instead moving and splashing about, trying to clean me and wash me down of any love I ever had. The only discernible substance beneath the waves of you was the salt in my own eyes. I never knew what heartbreak tasted like until you gave me tears. I didn’t need to catch up anymore. I could quit heaving. I could quit breathing. The only leakage I was catching was my own, dripping from the holes you cut out, empty and shaped like memories underneath my eyelashes.
