My body is a bomb shelter. Containing explosions that save the world and erode my insides until they are unrecognizable. Throw me your hand grenades without fear. For I will save you. My walls are thick and fortified, built from self denial and undying optimism. They can’t be crumbled from any threat on the outside. While the interior slowly deteriorates with the murky residue of supposed martyrdom trickling through misplaced hope.

I thought it made me stronger, taking on everyone’s tragedies like all they needed was the hero I could be. Give me your pain. Give me your struggle. Give me your hatred and let me shoulder it alone. Save yourself and run while I hold onto what I can. It’s in my hands. They are capable and willing. Unaware their strength is dwindling with each death grip. My muscles weaken under the pressure so I hold tighter. Pile on your pain so I can distract myself from my own.

I watch for the smiles and flashes of gratitude with every gun shot bang, but all I see are the backs of heads. Because I did my job. I took the hurt so they could walk away. Maybe I should have asked them to wait.

If only I could let go, maybe it would be myself I could save.

It was an early Sunday morning with chilled dew still resting on the cut grass outside when I laid on the cold hardwood floor of my family home. My arms outstretched 45 degrees from my head as my fingers reached towards my siblings beside me. They laid with their backs pressed on the floor as well.

We formed a triangle, interlocking our hands as we stared at the above skylight together. The two foot by two foot skylight—enough room for one of our skinny child-sized figures to shimmy through—stared down at us from ten feet above. Even with a chair, we could never dream to reach it. The door to the sky.

The chilly wooden floor numbed our minds, bringing us down from last night’s Halloween candy sugar high. It was a strange feeling to feel your pulse slowly pulling back into a normal pulse. To slowly realize you are a mortal again.

My older brother first spoke. “I wanna touch it.”

“What? The skylight?” My younger sister asked. “Mom will get mad at you if you break it.”

“No,” he whispered. “The sky.”

“I’m pretty sure she’ll still get back at you if you break the sky,” she added.

I cracked a smile. “I bet I can get there faster than you.”

I could hear his grin in his voice. “You’re on,” he bet.

Flipped over on my side, I added. “Sucks that you’re gonna lose because I’m an inch taller.”

“Mom says I’m still growing!”

I stuck my tongue out at him as my younger sister squeezed our hands. “When you reach the sky,” she whispered. “Don’t forget about me, alright?”

It was seven year later when the three of us separated into different colleges with different degrees. My brother moved to Georgia and planned on majoring in computer science so it could pave his way to becoming an astronaut. I aimed for an aerospace engineering degree and found a tiny apartment in Massachusetts. Meanwhile, my younger sister went across the country to California where she studied art.

In college, we dropped contact with each other. We forget about each other. We forget there was more to us than ourselves. We forget it was the same sun blinding us from above.

I think it was sometime in the late spring that I actually heard word of my sister again. Except, she wasn’t the one who contacted me. My sobbing mother was.

We met under the same umbrella. The sky poured down on us, like we were drowning in our sister’s tears. Inky black fabric clumped to our skin under the weight of the water. A pastor read in front of our family, his minituature gold cross necklace jostling with every word he spoke and every breath he took.

“We are here today to mourn the loss of Angelica Felix…”

His words were drowned out by the sound of raindrops thudding against my sister’s coffin. A few of her latest paintings covered in a clear coat propped up against the coffin, making the only hint of color here from her paintbrush.

My brother didn’t say a word to me that day. He just took my hand and squeezed it. Holding his chin up, slightly out from under the umbrella, I couldn’t separate his tears from the rain.

Together, we looked up. Gazing at the sky like the clouds would write out the answers for us. Like life would ever become simple like that. As simple as a couple of kids dreaming about what lies above the skylight.

“I guess we know who won the bet,” I murmured under my breath as I stepped out from under the umbrella. “I’ll meet you up there, okay Angelica?”

I had a feeling she was staring down at us that day. Looking through the skylight. Through the door to the sky. The door to Heaven.

Everyday I talk my heart off the edge.

It’s always muttering about how it’s got to be the end of the world with the way it always hurts and breaks and breaks and breaks.

I say stop, I take it by the shoulders and shake it.

But it’s eyes never meet mine. Even if they did, I don’t think they’d see me.

They see nothing but him.

And he’s the worst sight for the heart’s reality and the best sight for the heart’s dreams.

Everyday I talk my heart off the edge and I don’t know how I hold so many conversations inside of me.

Those terrifying moments of the world resetting itself when it's too early to be morning and too late to be night. Those are the moments the world rests on a cliff edge, ready to roll back to what it was or roll forward into the unknown. Those are the moments I crave to go out and raze the world to the ground and raise a new one from the ashes.

But those moments are just a few fleeting seconds that fly by before the sun rises and the decision is made: here is the same, disappointing, unchanging world.

#change #world

Tincture: pain and suffering

Steeped in soul's deep waters

Seeping leaves whose fragrance yields

Reminders for the latter

Drink of sorrow’s bitterness

Tinged, once it imbues

Impressing on my senses

Pain’s taste and residue

Searing in my memory

The why, I’m suffering

So when I near the trigger ’gain

I fear that which it brings

I never knew I was forbidden until the warmth of the sun seared my skin. Forgetting about our secret in our stolen momemnts. Decloratoins become silent tones trying your best to avoid being overheard. The world fades back into my mind reminding me that my love made a room just for us. Loving you is a crucible in itself. Is it possible to hate someone so much that you are consumed with wrath? Then love them with a passion that consumes you the very next minute? I live and die by your design...

My life has been so enveloped in yours I am not sure how I could live apart from you. For every idiosyncratic love I have a loathe. Are we forbidden or are you just scared? I've spent hours hidden in a parked car, late night drives early mornings like I was a character in a Stoker novel.

A love forbidden by your own decree, kept in you closet of skeletons and regrets... When it's over no one will ever know. It will never be spoken of so like a silent night illuminated by the rising moon. You will know that something was there but no one will ever hear of it. Just another John Doe in the morgue of insicurities and apparences.

#forbiddenlove #forbidden #secrets #love #challenge

@demcmurphy

Heartbreak has been degraded until it no longer describes the pain it originally meant.

Heartbreak feels worse than just a broken heart. It feels like the very fabric of your existence is unraveling, your veins are short circuiting, and the atoms that make up you are falling apart.

A broken heart can be taped back together, but there is no repairing what I feel. Maybe it’s not heartbreak. Maybe it’s just devastation. But whatever it is, I don’t think it can be summed up with a single word.

John Green once wrote that maybe metaphors were created to describe pain. I don’t know if that’s true, but it feels right.

I know you didn’t mean to, but you broke my space-time continuum. You broke my heart or malfunctioned my engine. I don’t know what makes me run, but somehow you destroyed it.

There is no medicine, no words or magical remedy to repair the damage that’s been done. I fear I will feel like this forever. I know everyone says it gets better, but I don’t want to get better if it doesn’t include you.

Maybe that’s my downfall, or maybe it’s just you.

when i was angry i'd bite hard. i'd open my mouth wide, as if to scream, and then sink my teeth into the flesh of my arm. it would hurt, but only for a moment; it would leave behind two red lines that faded quickly.

sometimes you'd see but you never told me stop.

my chest was just too warm, my heart was overheating. my lungs were drowning in desperation from a life that simply refused to start.

it wasn't the pain that i was after, i only needed to get the fire out from under my skin. i didn't want to punish myself, only the uiverse,

but i fell short.