Theea
see the city and the ocean mist
Deep breaths, Theea. I count them like beads on a thread, slow and shaking, trying not to drop any.
It’s like when I cut myself on a knife I wasn’t supposed to handle as a kid—the thin shock of it, the bright sting, the way I cried. The way I was always calmed when I got hurt. Fuck, do I hurt now; my whole chest is so full it hurts, like my ribcage is a door jammed by too much furniture. It’s hard to breathe around it, and it’s something euphoric and horrible all at once, sunrise over wreckage. The guilt I’ve never let myself look at has roared to the surface like a riptide, grabbing ankles I thought were steady.
His hand is moving soothingly up and down my back, slowly, tide smoothing sand. I try to breathe and suppress the weeping I’d broken into, but I still hold on tight. He smells like travel and wind and pine and peppermint. Always the pine and peppermint—he hates spiders—and the scent anchors me to the moment like a knot I can trust.
"I couldn’t hold on," I say into his shoulder. "I couldn’t pull you up."
And then it’s hard not to burst into tears again, because I know how temporary this is, and there’s so much I need to say, so much that it can’t all be said in a single night. The night is a shallow cup and my words are a storm; the hourglass is bleeding fast, and all I can do is press closer and try to pour as much of me as I can into what little time we have.
It’s like when I cut myself on a knife I wasn’t supposed to handle as a kid—the thin shock of it, the bright sting, the way I cried. The way I was always calmed when I got hurt. Fuck, do I hurt now; my whole chest is so full it hurts, like my ribcage is a door jammed by too much furniture. It’s hard to breathe around it, and it’s something euphoric and horrible all at once, sunrise over wreckage. The guilt I’ve never let myself look at has roared to the surface like a riptide, grabbing ankles I thought were steady.
His hand is moving soothingly up and down my back, slowly, tide smoothing sand. I try to breathe and suppress the weeping I’d broken into, but I still hold on tight. He smells like travel and wind and pine and peppermint. Always the pine and peppermint—he hates spiders—and the scent anchors me to the moment like a knot I can trust.
"I couldn’t hold on," I say into his shoulder. "I couldn’t pull you up."
And then it’s hard not to burst into tears again, because I know how temporary this is, and there’s so much I need to say, so much that it can’t all be said in a single night. The night is a shallow cup and my words are a storm; the hourglass is bleeding fast, and all I can do is press closer and try to pour as much of me as I can into what little time we have.
i wish you could be here for this
