The Hoplite

five

"the aftermath of a depressive episode tastes like rotten teeth, because they do rot when you don't take care of yourself."

27/03/2023

It has been so long since I touched a pen to the paper, pressed down a key of this computer, hearing it clack, clack, clack. It clacks loudly and creaks comfortably. It's been so long since I unleashed a crafted word, a careful expression. Since I poured out a cup of my insides; since I sold it for free- mine are the cheap stories. I finally felt the knots in my stomach move around and dance as I typed you out of me.

I've gutted myself so lovingly, and it took so incredibly long (a lifetime), only to be filled back up with antidepressants and proton pump inhibitors. Fried my stomach worrying. The doctors rewired my new, titanium-built skeleton. I walk once again. What a strange feeling, writing out of functionality, not despair.

And, suddenly, I find myself crying. I am weeping health. Every emotion seems a performance and I don't know which words are my own anymore. A coherent (not so much) earworm, constantly buzzing with something unknown, itching.

With any luck, I will go down in history as my family's proudest disappointment. It's comfort, but dancing so close to uneasiness. Sitting in a busy cafe, surrounded by people and indifferent. Smoking isn't automatic movement anymore. I spite and I laugh and I cry with joy. I spite! 

Still, the deafening silence stays. Nothing is still enough and I begin to learn it never will be. But, through all my obsessive, you stay anyway. My sweet collarboned thing.

I wish to be touched, good god in heaven, I wish to touch again. I am a photograph of old lovers sporting the gentlest of embraces. I am bending me for the benefit of myself. It's like growing pains, but so very different. I am growing, but so much more than that. I am expanding. My diaphragm is now a soft bed sheet, I will embrace you, lover, gently with the sides of my stomach. I will breathe you in; keep you in a lung hidden from every wrong.

Eternal kisses with eternal hugs. Perpetually yours. Perpetually confused, left forever to wonder what sent you to me.