I Can’t Wait To Hug You And See You Again. I Miss You.

calling your lover "my lover" is the most TENDER and SOFT and HOMOEROTIC thing you can call them and we should do that more often as a society

every time I talk about my own abuse for the sake of justice or awareness, all the words punch the back of my throat, a heavy thumping that spills from my mouth like the ugly mess it was. it’s still so painful and emptying and numbing all at the same time. It feels like I spoil the conversation, that I’m being uncouth or impolite. my story has no place anywhere.

a glass just empty, full of unoccupied space. a head tangled with words. I’m still confused about the concept of justice. and love. and forgiveness. it just feels unfair. just feels so wrong to make my own body’s safety into a movement or a form of activism. I don’t want to be loud or strong or empowered, I just want to be safe.

this world, full of its misogyny and hatred towards women, doesn’t help. The vilification of victims in the media makes me feel even smaller. the internalisation of misogyny, undermining my own pain because of my body’s “crimes” doesn’t help either.

my voice sometimes doesn’t feel like my own. my body never feels like it belongs to me. all this activism and anger and pain and I still can’t shake the feeling.

I worry about other girls. I worry about their voices being stolen not only by their abusers, or society but also by themselves.

I don’t believe that the love between eva and I is coincidence. in this big, big universe, we happened to be in the same classroom. she was the first person to teach me that I did not need to change in order to be loved and is quite literally the definition of a boundless, unconditional love. I’m very lucky. I think some sort of divine power sent her to me. how her smile still calms me, a year later. how beautiful and brimming with life she is. thank you evka. I’m not sure you’ll ever read this but you have my heart.

Let it Snow (2019)

the kitchen smells like toast and fresh coffee. I’m at the sink, washing two mugs for us, singing softly to etta james. you come up behind me and envelope me in a tight hug, lean your mouth into my neck and say good morning angel. I make some joke about how you’re up early for a sunday and we both laugh. I turn to hug you, my hands soapy and dripping wet from washing the dishes. we kiss and laugh at the hand prints on your t-shirt. you don’t care. love is the small glow of the stove light. and the break of sunshine through the window. love belongs here, with us, on a sunday morning.

handing you an orange slice and saying here eat this, my love. the intimacy of the tiniest acts of love between us are deafening. you smile, mouthful of citrus saying thank you for the sweetness, honey. we say we love each other silently, in the small things and without even saying it.

today, on the anniversary of my final suicide attempt, I went out and witnessed the Black Lives Matter movement, felt the rush of humanity coming together, the inexplicable feeling of togetherness and justice. I squeezed my boyfriends hand and bought chocolate milk, sat by the river with him and breathed in the air. exhaled. inhaled. there’s so much sweetness in the air.

and isn’t that just what we’re here for. to witness and experience all this sweetness. to feel all the pain. to grow from all of it. to cut short that inherited trauma. isn’t that what makes us flesh and bone and cartilage.

my story was not that of a superhero who overcame all the pain and abuse and sadness. I’m lucky enough to have the most amazing people around me. lucky enough to kiss and laugh and run and eat foods that make my heart happy. I won’t make a fairytale out of my story but god, I’m so glad I’m still here. so glad I didn’t leave.

altogether too empty to really quite exist. not pretty enough to make people stop and stare but just attractive enough to make a boy fall for the spark in my eyes. I feel like half a person, a waxing gibbous moon. had the potential to be something wonderful. don’t want to be normal or ordinary but I really am nothing special. that’s the curse of living I guess. you gotta live with the fact that you won’t be an elvis or a bowie or a keats.

borrowed time, green eyes and sunshine. oh how these river currents move like your body on top of mine. like the quiet disappointment of your wandering eye. how i could live, die and breathe in this moment, experience eighty years of heaven and hell with you. the sun on my skin feels like a kiss. steady, lover. stay with me through the summer.

Lover, I know I’m such an excessive woman. I bleed so many emotions, each as destructive as the last. I breathe in love and exhale anxiety, infecting everything around me with paranoia and insecurity. I bleed scarlet angry and drink bluesy sadness, so much pain and turmoil, so much misplaced passion.

It must be so overwhelming to be mine, must be like loving a charred forest that doesn’t know how to trust the sun again, mistakes warmth for destruction. Lover, please leave if you find yourself crumbling under the weight of all that has broken me. I know I’m too much and that I’ve painted the inside of your heart in splatters of ugly colours, regurgitated trauma.

But you say no. You tell my ghosts that if they’re staying, then that they’d better make room. You hold me until I am strong enough to walk again, kiss me until all the loss tastes like strength. Tell me that the inside of your heart is a masterpiece now, all those colours look so pretty. You hold up a mirror to it and say look, how can all this look anything less but human.

A love so unconditional, so relentless in its support. How lucky I am, lover, to call you my own.

me, after going five days feeling good: maybe…I am… Recovered™…?

me, crashing down on a trigger the very next day: oh