This body is a shell that I have begun to call home, it is not mine, as I am trapped outside, while someone else is still inside. I often look inside. There are many rooms in this house, many have ghosts, others hold secrets that I have yet to face, others... are starting to flood. Overwhelmingly letting themselves be pronounced, scratching and hurting. While I catch myself sending crying letters to the street, I stop and destroy a hand that nearly touched it.
I am alone at a cost, the pressure to stay, the pain that comes with silence, desperately wanting to trust myself and no one else.
I don't believe that someone else's hands will help me stay upright. That is a burden I will not allow another to bear, because they have betrayed me before. One should never trust one's life to another, or so I believe.
Go outside. Take a shower. Make some friends. Advice that goes from one ear to the other, ignored. I have tried and failed, and I have continued to fail. Over and over again. My knees are bruised, I'm tired of walking, of looking for another house, of another stuck outside. I have realized that I only have myself.
Was it worth staying? Will I forget it once I face it? Will it hurt less? What will I find inside?
I need to find a way back in to put my curiosity to rest. While my fingers freeze from digging, screaming and bleeding. I long for a warmth that is not mine. The heat of my breathing is no longer enough, it is not enough. I must move on, until I have managed to make this house mine. Its ghosts, its cracks, its secrets, I must face and accept them before seeking the warmth of another, because a spill from this house would cost my trust a lot again.
They would take away another room from me.
As the years went by, I noticed that it wasn't hot before, but when you stay still... eventually your own heat calms beneath you and it's enough. I have become tender to the warmth that solitude gives, its humble presence. As long as this house can be mine again... I will wait for myself, embrace my terrors, and face this trauma the way I faced it when it appeared.
Alone.
Welcome to my Humble Abode, it may be haunted, and I may be trapped outside, but it is a house nonetheless. It's still warm inside, I can feel it when I look at it.
©Goathico February 2022
YOU ARE READING
Tell Death Where They Hid My Bones
Short StorySometimes I don't know if I write from my heart or from my head. Drowned in grief and sorrow, I try to get up to escape to never ever. I would like to be reborn again. Born in my body. Collection of writings by the artist and writer Goathico. ©Goa...