what i fear most is attachment; the tether that takes place unseen, the slow surrender of self into something that can leave, and the ruin of learning how to breathe again once it does.
can numbness be sanguine amidst memories? if so, this frustration has no home, no roots to hold frame. i yearn to remember the prettiest parts of us without the hope of what never will. i want to feel again without the urge to run from the pain, without wounding you.
i choose this: again, and again, this wound where affection does not dim in the wake of change, where memories haunt like a bruise beneath the skin, unsoftened by distance, unhealed by time. i return to you, knowing this may never become anything gentler than what it already is.
a self-inflicted wound— it is excavation. it is being emptied out in places i didn’t know had walls. the loss of the shelter, the quiet place your name sounded safe. you knew how to hold me without asking what was broken once. what remains now is not just absence, it is exposure.
standing in the aftermath with no roof over the ribs. no language eroding for the ache that keeps echoing. my muscles remember a touch that no longer exists, reaching for it anyway. again, and again, like a reflex that refuses to die.