My heart beats beneath the rock you wedged it into. Yes, it still beats and as much as it pains me to admit, it will now and forever beat for you. For your smile, for your laughter, for our inside jokes. You can’t touch me and not feel the rapid movement deep inside my chest. Tell me you don’t see the way I look at you. Tell me she calls your name better than I ever did. Feed me lies and I’ll eat them like they’re real. Wince when I touch you and I’ll shrink away, beat my emotions to the concrete floor and I’ll gasp my last breath just to tell you those three unforgettable words. Then tell me how you’ll turn around and forget them, letter by letter.
My eyes will always gaze up to reach for a glimpse of anything that you used to be, trying so desperately to reach for a simple smile, a single hint that you’re still standing next to me. All I see are frowns, clown acts, and someone who is trying too hard. Don’t try so hard and the ghosts that whisper sweet nothings in my ear at night might actually take to your advice. I’m tired of waking up and hearing their whispers turn to stern voices. Their stern voices urge at me but I won’t move, I refuse to even graze a finger past your invisible bubble. What if I get bit? What if the venom seeps too deep this time and I don’t make it out alive? The voices are screaming now, pleading with me to take the black veil off of your words and see what you’re really trying to say.
Love was an endangered species to me years ago and now I’m trying to save it? How do I save something that is so close to being gone for good? I grab hold of the rope but it just keeps slipping from my fingers. Rivers are overflowing with the loss of my heartbeat but the rapids will tempt me to let it go. I can’t let go. No matter how hard they push or how long they fight against my small body. My feet continue digging into the sand, trying desperately to find a way to keep my heart in place, to give it another chance. But I can’t fight this current on my own. Where’s the life vest you promised me so long ago?
Now is when the tears start to come. Like clockwork. They come so easily. My feet are no longer able to stay in place, to keep a good hold on the bottom of this endless river of fate. But no matter how hard the rapids slap at my face, trying to get me to just give in and let go of everything I’ve spent years fighting for, I won’t give in. I won’t give up. My feet are at last swept out from underneath me after hours, days, weeks, even months of fighting for this. My stomach drops as I realize that there’s nothing more I can do. I flow with the rapids, side swiping rocks and with each throbbing gash I’m reminded of everything that I’m losing, everything I couldn’t hold onto.
Your arms wrapped around my waist, your gentle hands grazing the back of my neck, the laughter we shared in the grass, throw it high and tickle me until I can’t breathe. Surprise the candles and sweet words in the dark when I find it’s too hard to smile on my own. Take the center out of your lunch to make a heart and wrap it in the love I feel whenever my phone blinks red with your words. Reach for my body as it sinks to the floor and pull me back into the life I was never shown before. My fingers graze those words as I open my lungs and breathe in every feeling known to mankind. Your heartbeat used to beat the same tune as mine. But men with badges and wings know it’s time for me to let go and allow the water to push me off at the end of its journey. The water disappears from my sight off in the distance and I plead as I grow closer and closer to the edge. I’m not ready to use that thin slip of paper yet. Tears well in your eyes and my heart continues to break. I still have the rope wrapped around my waist but I doubt it’s connected to shore anymore. Maybe it snapped at the knot, maybe it ripped on a rock. Either way, I’m rapidly approaching a destiny that is no longer left to fate. Now it’s up to me to save my own heart and yours at the same time. I can’t ask you to fight for the same but there’s a part of me that hopes you will. Alright, I’ll admit it to you but you have to lean in close. There’s not a part of me that hopes you will drag me to shore before I reach that edge, every inch of my body is aching for you to.
I’m inches from the edge and my stomach is suddenly in my throat. I see in a mere second every moment we ever spent together, every moment you held me close, every tear and laugh we shared, every secret, every single memory. It floods my mind like the rapids that are tearing me towards the drop.
A hand catches my heart in the last split second of waves and rapids and I’m yanked from the spiral of rocks and struggle and desperation. My body lays limp from the loss of your touch after so long that when you finally reach out and your index finger grazes my spine, I let out a sigh and I’m revived. One finger, that’s all it took. One more moment in your arms envelopes all of the doubt and ships it out to space. Out into the endless abyss. I’ve never been so sure about anything in my entire life and the fight is always worth the outcome. Just when I think that nothing will ever be the same, just when I think that I don’t know how much longer I can fight the angry current, you come back into view. You take me to another world with a glance of your eyes, a flash of your smile, and a moment of your kiss.
I will never stop fighting this river. No matter how battered I am at the end of the journey. No matter how worn my feet and legs are from wrestling against the splash of this distance. No matter how long I have to make my breaths count. Because I know that you’ll be there at the end to fight. Right there. Right beside me. Surprising me every single time that you haven’t wavered an inch. Time will represent our life together. Even when that time isn’t shared with each other. Even when that time can’t be shared with each other. A timeline of the perfect heartbreak and the perfect romance.
Let the ocean do what it wants because this tide isn’t giving up anytime soon.
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