Wave After Wave.

You flood my shores

Your waves crash upon the sand

Smashing the loose rocks I rolled into place

       for protection.

Your waters fill each empty space

Between each grain of sand

It all swells as you erase the emptiness

And deflates as

       you leave.

Wave after wave you attack and withdraw 

You erase old things

You wash up new treasures

Wave after wave and I can't help the thought

That this is precious for me, but for you

       it's not.

Temporary.

You only love me when you're drunk

When life has tossed you back

The way you toss back your shots

When it's two in the morning and

     there's no one else.

You only love me when you're drunk

     on heartbreak.

I press a band aid to the wound and kiss the spot

I make you better again

Until you aren't.

You only love me when you're high 

     on pain.

When your heart needs to bleed out loud and I listen.

You only love me when 

     it hurts.

Say it.

I miss the ability I once had to confide in others about being depressed. 

I guess it's been so long - on and off, soaring highs and dark lows that are so, so low - that I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted of confiding. Exhausted of waiting for someone to save me... to change me... to heal me. 

I always hope that doing 'fun' things would work - chocolate, hanging with friends, losing weight or dating a new significant other. But nothing does. Not for very long. Not for long enough. 

So I search, but searching isn't enough. 

I dig, but never deep enough. 

I drink, but alcohol swoops me up and flings me back down.

I want "I was depressed" to be a thing, but it isn't. Never in the past tense. Never for very long. 

I miss the girl who called her bff at 2 a.m. to confide and cry because she knew that he'd be there for her.

Maybe I feel like I should have outgrown her feelings by now, but I haven't.

And now I envy those who get on Facebook and Instagram with the strength and bravery to say to the world "I am depressed. Please help me." It twists my heart into knots because I want to but I can't. I can't. It's like the years - the past decade - have sewn my mouth shut with a tight selectivity so that I can giggle and be witty and do my job but I can't say the things I really want to say.

Maybe in a way, this is me finally finally saying those three sickening words.

But then again, maybe not.

Grounded.

He loves me, but

With both feet planted firmly

With one arm tight around us

While the other guards his secrets.

He loves me, but
His heart is broken
Everything is perfect

But he waits for thunder and lightning.

He loves me, but
He stays grounded

Safe.

Not Your Own.

Maybe you've been raped. 

Maybe it was a long long time ago but haunts you like it was yesterday.

Maybe you've spoken of it so infrequently, and in so little detail, that you're not entirely sure it happened. Maybe the admission tumbles from your lips swiftly and awkwardly in embarrassed mumbles and then you change the subject.

Maybe you're embarrassed but you're not quite sure that it's right to feel this way. I mean, there are so many other emotions you have the right to be feeling. You should be angry. But you aren't really, are you?

Unless maybe you're angry at yourself.

Maybe all those emotions are directed towards yourself and not your violator.

Maybe the act took place in a rush of alcohol and fear... of darkness and begging and tears. Maybe it was so fast that you didn't realize that it was over until you slouched on the floor shaking and grasping at the little air your lungs could swallow. 

Or maybe it was long and torturous. Maybe you vomited.  Maybe you closed your eyes and stopped screaming from sheer exhaustion. Maybe you shut down and let it happen and then locked it away.

And doesn't that make it your fault?

Isn't that why you never talk about it?

Until years and years and years later when you realize that your version of sex doesn't match with your friends'. Maybe, eventually, you go through the motions because it's normal.

Maybe your body is no longer your own. Maybe a part of it will always belong in that one instance. In that moment when it was ripped away from you - when you were ripped away from yourself.

Maybe you've relived that one encounter for a few minutes every single day since it happened. Maybe you feel threatened whenever you're physically intimate, like you no longer have the right to say no. So you never do. 

Maybe you only have sex with people who don't matter to you, avoiding it with the ones you care about, because sex is dirty and painful and ugly and why would you share that with someone you actually love? So you leave it to those who you won't particularly miss when they disappear.

Maybe you want to fix yourself, to talk about it, but you're scared. You're scared that someone, somewhere, someday, will tell you that the guilt, the shame, the disgust, all the emotions directed towards yourself, are right. Maybe someone who knows better will confirm that it was your fault. That you shouldn't have been drinking. That you shouldn't have worn that outfit. That you should have worn underwear. That you shouldn't have kissed them. 

Maybe, just maybe, this is you. All of it. A few lines. Maybe you'll take a look at yourself in the aftermath - days, months or years later - and you'll be able to see that you actually do belong to yourself. 

Maybe not today. 

But hopefully, darling... hopefully soon. 

Puzzle.

Piece me together like a puzzle
A complicated one
Whose pieces you have no choice but to scatter
       across the table
Whose beginning must be a corner, sharp and imperfect
Because nothing else makes sense.

Piece me together like a puzzle
Whose hundreds of crooked nooks never
       quite fit
Whose coming together is slow and hard
And makes you tear at your hair
Whose bits end up strewn across the floor
Thrown across the room
Lost in the carpet
Until you throw your hands up
       in surrender.

Piece me together slowly
Like a puzzle that soon
Soon
Soon
Becomes something beautiful.

One Starry Night.

Everything feels like magic when it’s 4 in the morning and you’ve been drinking.

Gabriel hoisted me closer so that my head nestled perfectly between his neck and shoulder.  An inky, starry sky stretched over our heads, concrete rooftop pressed into our backs and I closed my eyes.  “Are you sure I shouldn’t be getting you home?” he chuckled, nudging me out of my drunken state of near-sleep.

“I’m sure,” I murmured and pressed a kiss to his skin.  His scent was familiar and his embrace comforting, the way old ex-boyfriends always feel in the midst of new heartbreak.

“As you wish.”

“You’re being so nice tonight,” I giggled, even though logic told me that nothing funny had been said.

“I am, Lia.  I think we both need it.”  He brushed his lips to my forehead and pointed up, shifting the thin sheet that covered us.  “You can see Pegasus right there.”  Gabe’s index finger traced the constellation.  It was his favourite and the only one that I could ever pick out, even though he’d always made a point of showing me all the visible ones when we'd done this years ago.

“I see it,” I whispered even though I was staring at his profile - mentally tracing the dim lines of his fuzzy beard, big eyes and smiling mouth.  Why his girlfriend had cheated and left him just like that was beyond me.  I nuzzled his chest where his similarly broken heart pattered out a steady, quick beat.

“Show me the Big Dipper.”

“Ahhhh...”  I flipped onto my back and squinted up.  “That one!”

“That’s not even... that’s nothing!  You never pay attention!”

“Wait wait wait I can get this right!”

“Too late!”

His fingers dug into my sensitive waist and I burst out laughing, rolling around and tangling my limbs in the sheet while he tickled me and told me off for not listening.  Breathless, I managed to hold his hands away from my body, even though I knew he was allowing it.  I wasn’t strong enough to hold him off.

Not physically.  Not emotionally.  Not strong in any way.  Not tonight.

The thought made me sob and Gabe’s eyes opened wide.  “I’m sorry.”  My voice cracked and I couldn’t stop crying.

“Lia.”  He held me close and kissed my lips for a few precious seconds.  “You’re okay.”

“No.”  I squeezed the tears from my eyes, hiding my face in his chest.  “No no no.”

It wasn’t just my recent break up.  It was Gabe.  It was his kindness and his softness.  It was how masculine he was without being intimidating.  It was how safe I felt with him - here and now and when we’d been together two years ago.

Maybe it was, too, that we were using each other.  That our friendship, repaired and easy, probably wouldn’t survive our mutual rebound.  That now, in his arms, kissing him to distract ourselves from loss, I wasn’t sure I’d ever fallen out of love with him.

Or was that just the confused voice of my fragmented heart?

“I should take you home.”  He was breathless and I knew he didn’t want to take me home, so I kissed him again, forcing us deeper into each other and out of the clutches of heartache.

It felt like we’d been together for minutes when the sun started to creep up.  We were still just kissing when Gabe pulled away by centimetres to say “He’s an idiot.”

“What?”  My voice was slurred with lust and wine and a lack of sleep.

“He’s an idiot, Lia.”

I swallowed.  “So is she.”  Our eyes tunneled paths through each other.  “Maybe we kind of are, too,” I whispered.

He nodded.  “Maybe.”

Gabriel’s phone vibrating sliced through our trance.

“You should answer it,” I suggested softly.

“I don’t think so.”

But it kept buzzing and even though neither of us checked, we knew who it was.

“It’s... it would have been our anniversary last night,” he said against my temple.

“I know.”

With a harsh, rare “Fuck,” he wrestled the interrupting object from his pocket and I rolled away, physically sick.

Gabriel grabbed after me even while he spoke in low tones but the magic was gone.  It had just been one perfect, starry night and it was over.  All of it.  Over.



End.