It's been a month now, and tears still find their way onto my cheeks when I let my guard down. They hit my hands, my steering wheel, my knees, each time pelting me with the sadness that I'm not quite sure how to handle. Water fills me up, choking out my memories so that you are just a vision in a dream that I can't seem to escape from.
I see you walking around at Holiday World. I see you waiting in line for a funnel cake, laughing with friends. I see you spreading your fingers out as the wind tousles your long hair around the swings, high enough that time seems to slow and if I just reach a little farther...if I just reach a little farther then maybe you'll stay. Maybe you'll live again.
I loved you.
And that loved swallowed me up whole and I let it. When we were young my emotions vortexed in a black sea and I only had a teacup's depth of processing power.
But you were there.
When darkness I didn't understand clouded my eyes and made the world a terrifying and confusing place, I found your hands to hold and shield the flickering flame of my own light, the candle wavering in my grasp as anger over unnecessary trifles made me lash out at those around me.
When I was a child I'd lay on the floor of my room, pressing my ear against the worn carpet to hear which footsteps traveled closer. I knew each type and what emotion they brought with them. I'd hide away in the stories I'd never let you read, while I figured out that my life was not my enemy, and that more people cared than I'd ever let myself believe.
I burned away the memories and pictures of us when you took away the trust I had in friendships. The bubbling personality of a little girl who made friends in the supermarket line folded neatly under the crook of your arm as you walked away, leaving years upon years of treasured mementos I didn't know I would miss so much later, when my heart wouldn't let me remember.
I painted over the weekend hangouts, summers spent together, and stupid songs we made up with a shade of black so dark it swallowed all light, and I said I was better off without you.
I was better off without you.
I was better off without you.
I was better, but you hung onto my leg every time I tried calling someone else my best friend. I'd hesitate each time, the Totino's Pizzas your mother always made us burning the roof of my mouth as I tried to form the words aloud.
So I wouldn't. And you'd stop weighing on my shoulders for another day. The souls of your shoes pressed into my shoulders as I carried you down the terminal of the airport, waving goodbye to who I so desperately wanted to call my best friend. It took weeks of fighting for the words to feel right, and you'd wrap your arms around me, whispering in my ear the whole time.
I say it every time I speak to her now, partially to spite you.
I watched your mother carry you down the isle in an urn, and I all I could think of was that I was sorry. I blamed moving to Missouri, I blamed not going to the same grade school, I blamed being a bad friend, laying my sacrificed words at your feet, praying it would let me sleep better.
But still you haunt me.
You still fucking haunt me. The sledgehammer you sent through my chest throws air from my lungs every time I want to talk to someone else.
You won't let me. And I don't know how to rid myself of the chains, locking me in isolation. Fear links together with distrust, links together with anger, and the bruises around my wrists from these shackles are a deep purple of contempt I have learned to live with.
You have to let me go, because I haven't found the strength yet.
But I am so lonely. And you're dead.
