There’s our cyclone swallowing the middle of you.
But it was always, wasn’t it? It never was outside. For there’s nothing more interesting than you.
Your story maintains its cadence, and it burns so brightly that you’ve forgotten what a world of shadow looks like.
You aren’t in the sidelines. There doesn’t need to be some sort of OST to patch the silence.
We don’t need to pretend anymore that you don’t matter. We don’t need a whole script to emphasize the torrential storms you’re holding in. We don’t need a whole squadron of eyes to puff up your image. It’s perfect as is.
Forcing back whole tsunamis with a choked throat and some shaking clenched fists.
No, there doesn’t need to be some sort of well-spelled painted scenario to reveal how it is for you.
Don’t diminish yourself anymore. Don’t forget.
All your memories float in front of us, and it morphs into what you are, and where it’s going, and there’s nothing more fascinating than that.
Please don’t make your frame smaller, you’ll break your ribs that way.
These people you look out towards, these institutions, these gossip groups and newscasters and contrived fantasies depicted, do you think they know? Do you think they get it?
They just want your attention, and they want you to forget the cold biting away your cracked skin.
The hollowed apartment or fragmented home, don’t you think I see its reflections in your droplets? They reveal everything.
No book will ever capture those cramped memories. Nothing other than a big deep breath and a scowl to get through the rest of it. Please remember.
And while I witness your child self hopscotching toward the bus, however many years ago, pendants latched along the schoolbag – I see the river of incandescent emotions blossom before you, outward toward the Eternal cliff, toward where we are and going.
You don’t think I get it? You don’t think I understand what it’s like to watch the petals fall?
I will squeeze this frozen hour until it shatters. Let it flutter away into all the others, so that in every second otherwise I will remember. It’ll glint at me, whether in the baseball stadium or in an evening office, before shutting out the lights.
Walking alone at night. I’m there with you.