8-21

I’m mourning someone who no longer exists. I’m not sure if he ever did, or if I just fell for a sweet act. A face. An imitation of who he wishes he were.

It’s time to let it go. I struggled, but I’m missing a lie. Holding onto it gave me some relief, for a bit, like scratching a scab, but what’s the point anymore of dragging out the pain? I’ve poked at it here and there, enjoying the contact even though it was sick and harsh and I knew I was being unhealthy. 

But that’s an act on my part. I’m not being myself.

The weather is starting to shift. I can feel changes in the air, as the heavy humidity begins to sink down and coolness creeps above. My body is responding to the night, falling darker, ripe with sleepy crickets who speak slowly and quietly, their own bodies recognizing that their time is near an end. The birds fly overhead in great clumps, moving instinctively with the pull of the earth, and I feel disconnected and free when I watch them.

The earth churns, seasons move. I churn and move with them. I am ready to shed my old skin, this strange and nervous and desperate woman I became over the last year. I feel myself splitting, and coming forth. 

There is excitement and hope. I bury his memories away. I am clutching onto something that ruined me. I have my nails in a mistake, an error.

My old habits die hard, and I hate to admit I was wrong, I was fooled. I feel stupid and cheated. I close my eyes and seek within, feeling the newness unraveling, and I am trying to be kind to her. I am allowed to make mistakes. I am allowed to see the good, but I must leave before I shatter my wings beating against them like a bird on a window. Certainty was my downfall. I saw the reflection and it became my truth.

I will have the life I wanted. I adjusted you in--at least I tried--but it’s not such a hardship, I am finding, to erase you again. You were so careful to keep that distance, I’m finding there’s not much of you to remove, and what little there is, perhaps I fabricated anyway. I was making a truth for you that doesn’t exist. I’m kicking off the bitterness. 

I move with the air and the earth and my time has come to be born again.