Yours Truly [h.s.]

later

Harry,

I'm not sure why I'm writing this, a year and a half later and just as confused. A letter that will never feel the delicate grasp of your fingers, the passionate grip of your palm. A letter that will never hear the gentle breaths seeping from your lips, the mindless, raspy clearing of your throat. A letter and wayward carrier pigeon.

Maybe you resemble all that I used to be. All that I used to know. A soft, warm nest, crafted with dainty precision and reckless excitement. The nest that used to hold everything Dove. The gravity before the takeoff, the shackles before the flight. An invisible mesh trapping me from tasting blue sky.

I'm not sure if I miss you, or if I miss the home you used to be.

Pretending to talk to you makes you feel no-so-far away. A walk down the block, or a crossing of the boardwalk. Like maybe I'll peek out of the apartment one morning and see you there, your wispy curls and brilliant feathers shielding your heart like a set of armor. Fierce metal softened by downy quills.

I don't think that I miss you. I'm sorry, I know that sounds harsh.

I think I miss the comfort. The security. The reassurance that, at the end of the day, I could come home to your arms. But I'm not the same Dove you used to know.

I know you're a distant memory - the wings vanishing at the end of the horizon. And I'm okay with that, now. I've simply outgrown your cage.

It's been a year and a half since that day you showed up with that ragged, navy duffel bag. It's been a year and a half since I forged a bandage around my bones and jumped from the nest. I don't recognize the girl that I was, then. She's somewhere in the tangles of heartbreak and sorrow; lost in the pain and attacking the image of her reflection in panic.

She was adrift for a while, timid and unsure. I watched the clouds when I couldn't meet the birds, when each gentle chirp sunk into my veins like thorns.

It had been a full week when the girls finally decided that enough was enough. Seven days of hiding underneath the mask of my bedsheets, rustled into a tear-stained pile of cloth draped around my flightless body. Seven days of wincing at every miniscule flap of wings outside of the window. Seven days of pecking at scraps of food because the empty pit in my stomach took up plenty of room on its own. Seven days of listening for Harry in the soft whistle of the wind, and the scattered array of birdsong, calling out to me like sirens beckoning my doom.

"Dove, c'mon, we've gotta get you out of this funk." Shar burst through my doorway, jumping beside me on the mattress. The soft poof of her bun grazed my cheek as she nuzzled into my neck.

"I'm not in a funk." I croaked out, sadly laughing a little at the sound of my own voice. Hoarse from the pillaging sobs wreaking havoc in my throat, pinpricks of angry claws stabbing from disuse.

Shar sat up, a sad look across her face as she wiped at my dry cheeks with her thumb. "Let's go sit on the beach, hmm? We'll drag Téa along, too, she's just watching another one of her baking shows."

I shrugged, trying to stop the shakiness of my lungs as I took a deep breath. "I don't know..."

Sharise and Téa knew what I needed better than I did, myself. Maybe that's what best friends are for. Watching from the outskirts as you dance along thin branches, gazes locked on the ebb and sway of each careless movement. Waiting for the snap. Planted into the ground underfoot, ready to catch the fall back to earth.

Needless to say, we ended up at the beach. The girls, equipped with wine bottles concealed by brown paper bags, as if that didn't make them all the more obvious. It didn't matter, though. Because we dove into the sand, and drank gulps of the sunshine, and let pain and devastation seep out of our pores and bristle from our throats.