I've been lying low, dodging bullets, dressing wounds and packing the holes you left in my life. I've been sitting on my words and wrapping my feelings in wet tissue paper. They wriggle and twist and tear into tiny tomorrows.
The past month I have built. I have used those hurts, polished into tiny diamonds in the pit of my stomach, to build a panic room. There is something so useful, so intensely satisfying about a place designed to keep the demons out. I'm in it, with no windows to yesterday and no doors to tomorrow. Safe. Quiet. Calm. I've sat and let your storm rage through my tendons, stretch into sinews and escape through the hollows. Time has stopped and now has happened - and I've survived. Intact.
Around me lies the pieces of who I was. Who you were. Who we were. The burden has lifted, I no longer am responsible for keeping it together, carrying it on my shoulders or choking on its tail. It has left me to lie in shards, reflecting the mistakes we made. I see them. They are pieces of me.
I lie here now and my burden is no longer mine. Parts of me, long forgotten, are falling like feathers from sullen ceilings. I watch them dance in the stillness, fall fearlessly and land on my lashes, tickle my body, cover me in promises. They are still apart from me but the softness breathes upon my shriveled soul. I want to breathe in a new beginning. I want someone to wrap their arms around what's left of me...
