plethora

the sanctuary of our insides

can i be honest with you? i never fell in love with you.

i walked into love with you. i took the first steps into the temple of you with my legs shaking, my breath hitched. i wanted to know everything about you. i held the things you showed me with such care. your laugh, the feel of your hands, how you sometimes mumbled in the morning. your mother had wanted a girl, but i always wanted you. i felt their weight in my palms, felt the coolness, the warmness, the smoothness and the roughness of all the parts of you. you were so beautiful, did i ever tell you that?

did i ever tell you that enough?

my footsteps echoed wherever i went. there were times in which the things you showed me made me feel afraid. i remember walking through the dark parts of you, slowly, quietly, with a flashlight in my hand. those things had hurt you for so long. they were so heavy. it hurt to touch them. why did you keep them there? i rubbed metal lamps filled with the things you hated about yourself with my thumbs and wished to help you see how i saw you.

do you remember the time i spent hours screaming your name? do you remember the spray of the ocean, the wetness of the rocks, the...coldness? it had been so cold. you had wanted to jump, to get swallowed by the sea because there were so many dying things in your throat, so many things drowning you. do you remember how my hands had felt around yours that night?

i...i made a home for myself in you. i became so in tune with you. i learned how to take care of your parts. i hummed in the hallways of you, painted the walls of you with my love. i had let you settle in me, too. i let you run and walk and sing at the top of your lungs and put flowers in the parts of me i thought had wilted. were you comfortable? did you like what you saw?

when i started to crack, i patched what was broken. i made them stronger. i made them better for you to live in. you did the same. but, why? why hadn't you told me about the thoughts mildewing under the wallpaper? did you think i would have been ashamed? why, why didn't you love yourself?

i had been inside you for so long, i had become so comfortable, that i never noticed there was space for more. two's company, but three's a crowd. there were fingerprints that were not mine on the parts of you i had spent my time loving. there was an echo of a song that bounced off the walls. i awoke one night while sleeping in a cot made out of your heartstrings with dust on my face. i had thought that you were starting to crumble again, so i braced your beams, caulked the leaks, sealed any cracks i could find. i tried my best to help make you stronger.

but still, the water rushed in. it splashed against my ankles. i tried to gather the nails, the hammer, the glue. i tried to mend, but it kept on getting higher. it kept on getting harder to move. i started bashing in nails with my fists, smeared hot adhesive with my bare fingers. in all of that, i didn't even notice that the walls i had painted on with my love were getting a fresh coat. ypu once said that rain was sad, but also cleansing. what did you mean by that? once i was chest deep, i started taking parts of me. i put my trust in you, i put my faith. and my love, i put so much love.

you know that one scene in the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind where jim carrey says that he wished he had stayed? i wish you had stayed. i still remember you saying you wanted to be the actor he was: to be able to play the silly lead roles and be so good at the serious. it got so serious, didn't it? the water pulled me under. it got to be so much.

the next time i opened my eyes, i was floating on my back, drifting. i am still drifting. i am still trying to mend. but i lost my nails, my hammer, my glue and everything else i had used to bond and build us. you still live in the ruins of me. how is it in there? i am trying to hold the beams together. i am trying to make it work. i am trying 

to be enough

but i can't feel my hands.  i can't feel my hands i can't feel my