Last night, I got home with time crushed under the soles of my shoes. I sat on my bed, and the photo frames collapsed on the shelves. I tried to scrape the time away, but it was already creeping up my socks into my legs, and then into my hands, which lay palm up, waiting. For a second, when I blink, it seems they’re not mine at all, not anymore. They’re empty, bare. I panic and turn around and someone stands ready to catch me in the act.
She hugs me and I stop thinking. He tells me ‘I’ve got you’.
Sometimes I want it.
I linger for a few seconds longer, stand up hoping they’ll wrap their arms around me. Breathe. Breathe. There’s a place for me here. I just don’t know how long it’ll fit me. When will the open door flake into dust.
I always stand on my tiptoes without really meaning to, it just comes so natural to me, unlike the rest of this. I like that, my pointed toes a reminder I’m still running circles on the wood floor. It gives me a reason to laugh; I drop down suddenly, giggle, they smile, ask ‘did you get shorter’, and there it is. My excuse to break the tension. I’m always looking for it, desperate for a way to keep that distance I loathe, but seek. Dig it out the ground just to bury it again. I see tears, I see meaning, I see a chance for me to say something considerate and show an emotion I don’t want to share. I see a joke. I see a laugh and a way out.
They cry and all I think to say is a scream. To stand up, ask who placed me at the centre of this room, and why should I always dictate the way you think that you should feel. And if I wanted I could shake this floor, or I could not be seen. Choose, they whisper, but they know the answer that they want, and when I don’t know what to say they take away the choice at all.
I take a bite of my sandwich. It’s all bread.
Eyes adjust to the scene like to darkness, and it makes my head spin slightly. They cry. They stop. They move on, solemn, changed. I eat the silence. It tastes like fear.
I want to confess.
The hands I wrap around them, around you, they’re not mine. They can’t be. Mine are trembling and torn, thinking of what they can break. I slam doors, I use a force that destroys my nostalgic yearning. I treasure my possessions more than my skull.
The hands do that, they tear things and they make me cry. They hold your hands, your hair, your waist. What if I break it. What if I leave you like I left myself.
I feel your care and I can’t tell if I’m dreaming. Let me stay, I whisper. Let me never have to leave my arms hanging at my own side. Keep me safe, I whisper.
You go away in disgust, and I forget how I ever used to stand so tall on the tips of my toes. I think maybe I never stood still long enough to notice it wasn’t funny.