Please don't betray me

Please don't do this to me

Me to my body

I saw my future foretold in my mother's dying eyes

A life lived for tragedy

I can't do this I grasp at my cells as if to hold them well with just my fingertips

I can't help but feel as if my fate has been sealed

I never wanted to be the martyr

The memory

I wanted to be the one who lived

Shortly before my mom died

She, my sister and I went apple picking on a glorious fall day

It's one of the last memories I have of her before her cancer came back

In fact, they're both gone now

And it's just me and fall left

I sat in the sunshine today and the leaves fell all around me

And I was struck with the notion of how grateful I am to have this idle moment

In the security of warm sunlight on an autumn afternoon

It brings me back to them

Innocence and faith

It brings me back to walking along the river in an autumn of the past with my mom and sister

It brings me back to them

I'm an independent woman

My fight is my own

My joy is my own

I exhale into the frosty morning as the solitary sun comes over the trees

But I know with the certainty with which I know my place with God

That you are the most powerful thing I have ever held within my heart

I go where you go

And it will be the most defiant thing I have ever done

I prefer to call it melancholia because it sounds better than depression.

It lends it a waifish Victorian orphan, flowing night gowns, guttered out candles, delicate disposition kind of romanticism.

I think I've always been afraid of my emotions. I grew up believing that to feel was to experience pain.

I am relearning everything through the tiniest steps. Through the tiniest hitch in my breath.

There is beauty in there somewhere without me having to manufacture it. I just don't know how to find it yet.

I love to see women take up space.

I love it when they wear bright colored eyeliner and laugh loudly and wear shoes that click-clack down quiet hallways and wear perfume that lingers in the room after they've left.

I am here, they say. Look at me. See me. I exist.

I envy that confidence with which they claim their place in the world.

I envy that ease with which they say, you will not ignore me.

My grandmother once told me that God is no man. God is a ball of light.

It's foggy today.

I wonder if you're happy. I wonder if you're safe.

Who knew that grief could feel so good.

I keep the arrow in my chest because at least then I feel something.

Moving forward hurts my whole body.

I'm older now than you ever were.

What do you do when you don't know who you are?

What do you do when you don't know what to do?

I can't forgive myself but I need to.

These bones need to heal, it's time I gave myself that.

But in the wound is the memories. And I can't leave those yet.

If I let myself heal do I forget?

If this wound becomes a scar do I just leave?

What do I feel if there's no more pain?