And this is how I know that you, that this, that we matter.
***
When you are here, I am – mostly – here. Even if only for this moment, for this beautiful moment, you are here, I am here.
I hold you close and my mind is not travelling back to that boy who thought my skirt wasn’t short enough to be the girl who’s pretty enough to hold hands with when the rest of the kids were watching. Tonight, as I hold you in my arms, I’m not travelling back to the girl who left no mark when she realised I am the girl who knows how to bite back, when she realised I wasn’t the one to change colours like the rest of the pretty girls when it suits them.
Tonight your lips are an extension of my lips and it doesn’t matter that the water isn’t warm enough, for the perfect tea, the perfect swim, the perfect shower when you’re tired, doesn’t matter that much that the food I cooked last night wasn’t tasty enough, that I don’t know my body well enough to surrender myself to you. Tonight my lips are your lips and it doesn’t matter that this life slips out of control sometimes, that accidents happen even in bright light, even in daylight, even when belts are pulled and doors are locked and no one is drinking, no one is speeding. Tonight my lips are your lips and it doesn’t matter that we don’t always see the same stars, that sometimes you don’t see the stars at all, that there are days the only thing that we share is those dim lights spanning like replacement stars across the sky, that the sky was ripped apart from my hands once, that I was holding the sky in my hands once, that it crumbled like stardust in my fingers.
When you are here, for a moment I am here. You are here and the ghosts are not, the howling wolves are not, the howling voices in my head are gone, you are here and the only noise I hear is just this subtle sound, the sound your fingers make as you trace the future on my skin, as you walk through those dark alleys, my dark thoughts, those dark stories, those dark trails that I am too scared to walk through alone.
***
I am here and this is an apology for not always being here.
Forgive me for drifting. Forgive me for shifting. Between what is and what should have been, between the rights, the wrongs, what’s real and what’s not, myself as the protagonist, myself as the sidekick, the winner, the loser, the hero and the victim, someone who deserves to be loved, someone who doesn’t.
Forgive me. The past is a sticky place sometimes even when fresh love replaces the decaying remains of foul love, even when we are happy we lost to have found what we have found. The future takes us on a dangerous trip, a shaky staircase into unknown chaos. The future, the future how it sucks, how it pins us down to this never-ending, this never-ending swirling slide, how it ties us down to the bottom of these inexistent depths, how it deludes us into thinking that changes happen with thoughts, not actions, not with actions driven by feelings. I am here and this is an apology for the waves you can see in my eyes sometimes, for the waves I am drowning in and the multiple ways I have to downward spiral.
***
I am here and this is not an apology, this is me placing my heart in open display, this is me placing my heart in your hands, asking you to handle my fragile parts with care. This is is me, asking you to mind the wounds but not the scars, this is me, asking you not to treat the wounds, but let them heal, not to treat the scars but somehow like them anyway.
***
This is me, finding the courage to ask you to stay, finding the courage to ask you to like me anyway.
Rational Artist 