Fireworks in My Teacup

t w o

Missing people is the norm now.

We have all these memories and remnants of conversations lingering inside us and nowhere to dispose of them.

But do we even want to?

We grip them tightly like little kids clutching the frayed strings of helium balloons, apart from the fact that the balloons put smiles on faces as opposed to the frowns on ours. Frowns everywhere, too many frowns. They act like cold, brick walls in winter, protecting our soft, delicate insides which we deny are like cotton.

I'm cold, we say. I don't care.

Maybe if we keep telling ourselves and each other that, it'll eventually come true, but until then, our cottony insides vulnerable to hurt, to the sadness that can splatter across like muddy water under wellies in a puddle. When was the last time you jumped in a puddle, for that matter? When people choose to leave us, we bob around like bottles at sea that have lost their notes, and now seem to have no purpose at all. But was the bottle made solely for it to have a note placed inside it?