Today, I clear the dead flowers from the house.
The roses from mother's room, the daffodils from mine, the sunflowers I harboured in the living room, the lilies in the study. They are withered and worn, ripped from where they should be, left to serve as poignant decorations in homes that grow colder and colder.
Today, I clear the dead heart from within me.
The love that has suffered a thousand ends, the hope that has been dashed time and time again, the feeling of your hand on my chest—a feeling that never existed, one that I forged with my own fingers, with jagged breaths and your voice swirling in my head. It is time for the old to become new again, and I cannot reform, I cannot regrow, if this parasite still lurks within me.
Today, I clear the dead words from my notebook.
The midnight musings that poured from me like love—true, radical, afire love—the things I didn't say, the things you failed to mention, the fiction of what we would look like six years down the line. We were compatible, happy. We were honest. We called when we were coming home late. I helped you look for the things you'd lost—scripts, clothing, your pride—and your voice caressed my cheek when I looked at you (the new you, the grown you, the man instead of the boy) and saw only who you were; the child who could never make up his mind. I must build a new world, now. One without you in it.
Today, I learn to say your name without my entire body quaking, without my blood turning to stone and breaking itself against my bones, without that breath—the one that screams of a love lost, the one that sounds like a choking sob, a grinding gear, a tear for the mouth, heartache for the lips. I learn to peel the scales from my eyes, learn to brush my hands over my arms more gently, learn to bring back the love that had me swept off my feet.
Today, I find myself free; of you, of crippling affection, of a heart on fire for a burning boy, of the isolation that you wrapped around my limping soul.
Freedom has never felt so full, so abundant, so undeniably mine. I will take it, and rub it into my skin, and let it sing on my tongue, and have it pulse through my body until I—the boy you left behind, the man you're going to meet one day at a café and think I regret that—am made of something untouchable.
"They were beautiful," my mother whispers, her voice penetrating my cloud of thought. My eyes rise, and I find her staring into the plastic bag that hoards the dead and dying cuts of nature, her hands pressed together, a small smile decorating her face.
"They were," I affirm. The moment sits there, quiet, unassuming, and find myself smiling.
Once upon a time, we were beautiful. You, in your eyes and your smile and the way you press your lips against cheeks and necks and foreheads—me, in my words, in my heart, in the laugh that catapults from me, in how my fingertips stroke my legs and clutch at my arms, in my mother, in how the sun glows against my skin, in my fierce, bone-breaking, earth-shaking affection, adoration, admiration.
I am beautiful because I am not afraid. You were beautiful because you pretended to be unfazed by your night terrors, your curious love, your own crumbling self-worth.
But I was never meant to heal you.
The love that floods my veins would drown you, anyway. Your levees would fold in on each other, your flood banks would overflow, your soul would be washed away in the chaos, your heart would desiccate against the almighty shores of my love.
You were never meant to hold me.
I breathe—in, out, in, out.
I am free; I always was.
☀
The final situation.
It's been a long road—this period of my life—but here I am; 18 af and refusing to let him have an effect on anything I do. I will live, and I will love, and it will be magical.
Thank you guys for reading this. I'm glad I got to take this journey with you.
I love you.
—jay.
YOU ARE READING
along the road
Short Story❝And, slowly, I will find my way back to you.❞ - in which I attempt to navigate the perils of a terrible love.
