Maybe I just don’t know what doing right by you in this moment means. I wish it didn’t seem like we are only functional when one of us is stable or good. I keep wanting to take all of this on but I don’t think it’s all mine.
Be my fake savior, oh.
Maybe I was right a year and a half ago, locking the door after successfully smiling my ex off my porch five months after the breakup, when I knew I attracted what was alike to me. I know I could not support two or me. I know I would not survive, would not allow myself to have to survive, any more of other peoples fucked up shit.
I can make you feel better, oh.
But I saw your face and I wanted you. I heard your voice and I wanted to listen to you for years. I tallied your humor, your skill, your style, your strength and leapt into this crush with both hands open. I thought that you would never want me; I thought your rejection would be my safety.
And i, for all the openness I have tried to grant, can still not get honesty correct on your terms. Still can’t figure out what’s mine to tell, how much of myself to share, what’s safe and what’s forcing you to shoulder something you didn’t volunteer for.
What is safe? Are you safe around me? I know sometimes I make you doubt. I am a screaming, raging daughter of the earth. I admire justice, lap up the leavings of others’ revenge. I turn cold, bitter, a Himalayan vault of nitrogen anger and untouchable spite.
Am I safe with you? How many layers of myself will I unfurl? How many will you insist upon? How many times with I resheathe my claws wet with my own blood, penance for the ills you’ll say I’ve wrought? I am only a festering, shrieking harpy. I have tried to love you in my own rotting way.
So I don’t know how to do right by you, in this moment. I feel alone. I feel sad. My ability to glory in aloneness has been supplanted by memories of your eyes, your voice, your eyes. I seek your breath, the moving of your rib cage next to mine. If we have fought let me atone. If you are sad let me cry. I would carry this alone so that I can understand it. I would carry this because weight is what I know.
I feel alone.