It is life that weighs me down. It is a thousand existential crises that sparkle like stars through the night sky of my psyche. My loosened seams let the dust of my doubts spill out and I feel the glares of people who pass me in the street. They see it. The resentment of my puppet-strings makes all my movements jerky. My lips are left ribboned, bitten raw to keep from crying out.
There was once a time when I believed in the wishes muttered below my breath. It was a time when the sight of butterflies and rain against blades of grass reminded me of God and other intricate mysteries. The fleeting realisation of a loss of this acute awareness rendered me cold and wistful. These past few months, the hollow inside of my shell has been painted with pitch and lead. I could no longer float the way I once did. No one can understand that there is no explanation for anxious thoughts at the break of day. They call it navel gazing and label it as self indulgence. Needing time to sort myself out and sew myself back together again.
I could run to release some chemical in my brain to be happy, but then I remember that my breath escapes me for moments too long and the blood moves too slow to make up for it. This leaves whatever endorphin I desired to make it alright again, stuck somewhere between my spleen and left ear. I could soak my bones in spirits but I know that it is a betrayal to dull my emotions that run crimson and azure. It is no poultice to the soul and the dizzying loss of grip scares me. I could eat but reconsider when I stare at the darned sides of my hips that grew too quickly and the sway of my thighs that are threaded with pale skin.
I wish my toes could let me stand en pointe, so when I felt small and clobbered together like a clay figure, I could rise a foot taller and regain a sense of being fearfully and knowingly created. I had forgotten that I had been stitched with silk and moulded by kind words. I had forgotten the rose petals from my mothers garden and poetry from my father's books, had been pressed together for my skin. My bones were not carved from glass but from the heavy boughs of oak trees rooted in time.
It was only when I had begun to resent the gossamer nature of my soul that I tried to shroud it with loud words and bind it with my sharp tongue. It has slipped my mind that every shard of my being filters light and produces rainbows, it had become so clouded over that they had stopped dancing in the morning light. It was because my fingernails were brittle like sheets of mica, that I became scared to claw my way out of this niche I made for myself.
It should be tattooed to my wrist to be still, lest I forget that I have journeyed so far. I should paint on my eyelids words like "Remember " and "Savour" so my moments are appreciated in their wonderful brevity. My ears should be pierced with hope and self belief so they filter out words that hurt me. My lips coated in honey so I start speaking sweet words.
I feel hollow inside, needing adornments to remind me of who I am. And perhaps I will need them for a while longer.
