Three Years On

Who am I to put all of you into a box, vigorously shake your cocktail memories until you are blended into one? One emotion, one descriptor, one word. The flicker of my heartbeat as you resuscitated the part of me I’d waited years to feel alive in again. Inflate and deflate my hope while holding my feelings carelessly between your fingertips, playing with the living child as I slipped further into your treachery.

But I knew no better. The silk of my skin was still intact, unblemished like the pure white of my personal canvas until it was tainted with the toxin of the two headed you. I couldn’t escape, didn’t know how to. Inextricably linked, imprisoned by the view of you yet deluded by the naivety of youth.

I thought it was love. I wonder, did you?

He asked me one December if I’ve ever felt it true. I pondered this a moment, sifted through seven years of carefully filed manilla folders in the libraries of my mind. Oh memory how you’ve reminded me so. Of our first kiss, our bottoms wedged against the small, alternating slats of the garage grate, imprinting thick lines through our clothes. Those same holes forever reminding me of the time I chose not to sink fully into them and disappear into the channels below. Wondering who I would have become without the thorns you so viciously pierced into my soul.

I am lucky they didn’t turn into scars and I got away with bruises that only lasted a short chapter of my story. But time has a way of toying with us when we most want it to progress in measurable cups and spoons. It was a lifetime ago and yet the earth has only completed three orbits of the sun since I closed the chapter on you. I may flick back to your crumpled pages in times of quiet reminiscence but thankfully, you have exited the volume of my lived present.

I am no longer afraid of the unending flurry of question marks that appear before me; each period that follows on from its partnered, curious curve is a reminder of infinity. And I know no matter what, everything will be okay because I am me.

As for the little girl that sits tucked away in the corners of your mind, know that she will always tug at the hem of your dress wanting to chase magical trolls.