I am only saying this because last week when I pulled you into my arms, it felt like I was holding myself together instead of you. You are withering away right before my eyes and I can’t do anything but remind you that you are not invincible; you are no longer forever.
If this were a boxing match, I would have already surrendered and threw away my gloves. But it’s not a boxing match, is it? This is a game only you can play. This is you versus you, and neither can come out the winner.
I am sorry to say it, because your bones are very lovely and I worship them every night at the altar of my heart, but no one wants to treasure only hollow bones. You are not a simple display in the Smithsonian Museum; you have so much more to show the world. I know you’ve heard that the first dinosaurs were small, but sweetheart, even they didn’t live off just handfuls of nuts and raisins like you do. You’re so tiny that even wolves would reject the option to gnaw on your precious little hips, too afraid they’d only starve themselves empty too.
Nowadays, whenever you walk through the house in the middle of the night, I do not hear you. The floorboards do not creak under your weight because there is no weight there to rub against. Home has always been the sound of you, but now not even your bones rattle. You are so small, too curled in on yourself to remember how to expand. You have turned yourself into a skinny ghost of a person and I only wish you’d start counting breaths instead of calories again. You are the worst kind of death—the type that causes all sorts of grief even though it hasn’t even happened yet.
I know you often think of yourself as a disposable camera, good for capturing a few valuable moments then ultimately worthless in the end. But honey, you are like a tattoo of everything I have ever loved and never deserved, and you are slowly fading away into the canvas of my skin. Please quit disappearing, it’s becoming harder and harder to find you afterwards.
12/15/13
