16 August 2017 "On Bob's Last Day"

 If there were more pictures of you and me, what would they look like? I think, I don't know, but I think, most of them would have me staring (up, always up) at you, my eyes taking in the wonder of the universe, of you. It's amazing, isn't it, the things you let someone say, let yourself listen to, when you find them the most fascinating person in the world. You were the first fascinating person I knew, and still now I tie brokenness with character, loop pain with understanding, find empathy in those who know better but hurt too deeply to act any differently. 

I've tried for so long now, to stay mad at you. To allow myself to fall into the well of anger, if maybe that will allow me to understand you, to understand what you've done to me. What you are still doing to me. It took one phone call, less than five minutes, for the patched well of me to crack and for the leaks to spring. It hasn't always been this way--I haven't always known so deeply that I was terrified. What is a voice? What is a voice that says your name? 

There are certain people, I think, that make me feel so porous, like they might sink their hands into the flesh of me, sift it through their fingers, my blood in sinews and spiderwebs. Do you know what that feels like? I would never beg you to stop, would offer up the pieces you missed if only to extend the insistence that I am alive, I am a creature with a beating heart and words that travel upwards and slip out of me in whispers. My mouth dripping with the anticipation of being heard, not just by anyone, but being heard by you. This body is a body, but it is yours because I want you to have it. I've always wanted that. Is this what love feels like? 

I adored you, not necessarily for what you gave to me, but instead for the way it felt like being alive to be around you. How to continue living when you know there is a kind of living that feels so much more interesting? For so long, I would've followed you to the ends of the earth, taken everything you wanted and swallowed so it might light up my insides and let you see me. 

God I was so proud to be seen with you. Are you funny at all, or do I make people funnier when I am around them? 

When I think of you, I think of dripping water and of smooth skin and of balloons. Salt, snowflakes, running, but running fast. Your hands, a match to mine. What are hands? Ours are brown, they grasp things the same, mine so much smaller but still, they belong to you. 

I thought I was finished finding good memories, I've felt so tied down by the bad ones. I hadn't realized that tied helplessly around the bad ones are the good ones. They don't shine so brightly as they used to, because I've wanted so badly to hate you. But I don't. I never did. I do wish you were dead, but I also wish I could hold your hand. I wish I could look at you with the weight of me, convince you that the earth's power pins me down against the landscape the same way it does you. 

I think about the weeks we spent together, in Germany, in Maryland, in North Carolina. How can one person (me) have so much time and willingness to listen? I thought of you the way I thought about the world, big, and gravitational, and so hurt from being misunderstood. 

A lot of people say that the answer is to understand you for who and what you are and to move forward from there. To expect from you only what you have shown you are able to give, and to understand that hoping for more would only continue the hurt. But I thought you were the world for so long, and by being next to you, being a part of you, I felt a little like the world too. How do I heal from something like that other than to knock down the pedestals that hold me? If I knock you down, I will have to knock myself down first. 

I miss you not because you made me feel safe, but because you made me feel starstruck. I didn't have to explain you, nobody did. And yet all you did was explain, and I thought if I listened hard enough I could make you stronger. That's all I ever wanted, really. Was to do things that made you feel like the person I saw. Did I want to fix you? Of course not, I never thought you were broken. I thought the world was broken for how unfairly it treated you, but instead of getting angry I wanted to help you understand that sometimes things and people are good, and sometimes they just want to help, and sometimes we should let them. 

I can't help it--I can't stay angry. No matter how hard I try, no matter how badly I want it. I look at people and I see soft wind on baby cheeks and I see blinking away sunshine and I see warmth and I see good. Who am I to help if the things I find most beautiful are more melancholic than healthy? I open wide and I hope desperately for other people to do the same. How much will fit before I split down the seams, one thread at a time? I pick up pieces all the time, repair myself with breathing.