Ah, look at your eyes.
Worry etched in them.
I want to tell you I'm okay, that I'll be okay. But my tears say otherwise, don't they? I'm trying. Yes, I'm trying to wipe them away, to flick them away, like they never existed. And rewind it to when it was all smiles and grins.
But we're here. We're already here. So let me, just this once, stay silent. Let me be self absorbed in my misery and not fret about making you worry. Let me take off my armour and wrap myself around in your hand-down pity looking like a shriveled animal just taken in. Still wet behind the ears.
Maybe I am okay and this was just an episodic spillover. You wonder about that too and I say I don't know. I do know. But I say I don't. Hoping I believe it too. I'm starting to.
The truth is I'm just afraid. I'm afraid of spilling. Afraid of spilling on people who don't want to get wet. Afraid of spilling everything that's inside of me till there's nothing left for me to keep. So I'd rather stay full.
Just for tonight, I'll shrug off my pride and step into vulnerability. Loud and shaky, I'll say,
I'm not okay
I'm not okay
I'm not okay.
I say it three times, because people don't hear you the first time. They don't understand you the second. And three is just my favourite number.
Tears slide down my cheeks, I won't break their fall this time. Bit by bit, I'm trying to hold on. You're free to think of me as strong, and you're free to think of me as weak because a strong person can have their weak moments too and a weak person can have their strong moments too.
But you see?
Spills don't always have to be messy and a part of to-be-wiped list, careful of leaving no traces. Spills can be artistic too. And beautiful. One to be lost in, to be remembered and hung on the walls on canvases. So let's be that.
