by:Ishika
They tell me to speak my truth but I cannot find it anymore. I cannot tell it apart from the lies that I eat, from the ones forced down my throat. I lie through my teeth as I bite into words I want to scream out loud. How do you go back once you have known love?
On my tongue, the taste of your mouth burns but it has been long since. It has been long since you said that you loved me. I remember the day you did, quiet comfort of your breaths fanning across my face, as the words rolled off your mouth. Your weight shuffled onto mine slowly and we fell back asleep. There were mornings of solace, alleviating the cries of a mundane abidance following this. There was no shift in the air around me, but it felt like a shoddy mess lying in the back of my mind has been made sense of and folded into folios and quartos sedulously.
The following summer, we painted our house in shades of blue and red, splashing strokes of screaming color over white washed walls.
What do you do once love has left you? Yeats writes with his poise, “nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal”. There is some truth to this. My world came to a halt with a loud screech, yet not loud enough to silence the world outside of mine. It is true that we humans live in bubbles, bubble in bubble: finding one safe space after another. I haven’t seen you in two years now and words have crammed into journals each time I hear a sound like the ones of your feet or the whiff of your cologne.
As Yeats continues on with a sliver of hope, writing “Many times he died, many times he rose again”, I can’t help but ask myself I can ever know love again. If I can ever love again. Is there any room for redemption in this wasteland we have made? Or am I hoping on ends with an asinine dogged relent for the light to shine on my face and show the way? Is all life awry without love?
Really liked it. Found it relatable…