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Ready for Blue

On Loss and Returning Home, On Missing a Piece

By isa belPublished 7 years ago 3 min read
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The past is a lot fucking easier to bury and leave behind when you're not walking through his graveyard, through his fucking shrine. Who needs a memorial — wouldn't we all rather just forget? Would we?

I feel like I'm being haunted with every step I take — what was it I said about steps? Find some new ones? Looks like I've fallen right back into the old, just a step ahead, maybe. And why am I so happy? Because every time I close my eyes, turn the corner I see flashes of orange hair and fucking goofy smiles and freckles goddamn everywhere and I am absolutely haunted. There's no way it is real. There's no possible way that this has happened. We are all avoiding September — every night is just the one night he couldn't happen to make it. He's out of town, seeing family, working, in class, already has plans — this is not forever. There is no way. I have to go run from my dreams, but I think the rest of this book is going to be the memories, unwelcome, that keep flooding back every time I turn the fucking corner. Smile.

--

Clean in blue and get ready for blue and this at the moment in the minute of my life when blue is deep and black and blinding enough to make me question its existence at all — and I'm not clean and I wasn't ever ready. I see him in the ridges on everyone's eyes and arms and how can we all smile? A command, interjection, question and the only response I can pluck from my chest is a gasped no, an emphatically gasped no smacking with desperation and deeper than "as always," denial. We're pulling our skin off here, James, we are trying to shiver ourselves closer to you, cough your laugh back into our ears, and nothing is fucking working, and I cannot remember the last time blue felt comfortable because you disappeared in blue and white and I will never sit in one of those chairs without your name under my nails and how the fuck are we supposed to be here? Everything is staged, everyone is acting, and whose mask is comfortable because whatever hardness is stopping tears from falling down my face is starting to chafe and I'm ready to rip it off.

--

No one ever got ready for blue but here we all are, dripping with it. You know the feeling of seeing deep into someone's eyes when they're telling you something you know they've never said to anyone before? We're drowning in it. January has pounced on us like a lion and is tearing us apart — and the water keeps fucking rising. And how will any of us ever learn to be alone? There are nails on my chalkboard and my heart is screaming; the days flash by like paper planes, like matches, like knives, and these hit the ground with clatters. No one will ever be able to prepare for this. My hair grows every day and it wraps around my throat, and I cannot breathe through blue. And I need a smile.

--

No one got ready for blue — no one could ever get ready for this — but here we all are, healing and breathing blue without you. Six months to the day (to the hour?) on the day with your name, and we are pushing our leaking hearts back to whole, sealing cracks and patching holes, patching whole. My right lung is punctured and seeping blue smoke, leeching into the cavity of my chest, but I am seeing colors again, and not just blue, and not just in the sky and on the river. Six stones have dropped since you left — and I know you are still watching, and all I want is to ask you if I'm right, if he is right, because it's been six months without your arms protecting me and I need to know. Six months of blue, but we are finally smiling and breathing again — we miss you, but we know you are here, in us. Six stones dropped, and you've laughed at each one.

sad poetry
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About the Creator

isa bel

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