hidden things

i think fall hits the hardest … you could scroll the Pinterest feed everything is methodically about how autumn is life after death, but the truth is—sometimes we break gradually, sometimes the break is like glass, and we can never be put back together.

I hated how my sister smelled, wrapped around my neck and suffocated me in her scent, creating a thick opaque fog, hazy over my head, engulfing me in the faint presence of a shadow of her. As I grew farther and farther from her as each day passed as I didn’t engage in this childish game of make-believe making up memories with my sister, the hole in my chest growing bigger each day, I hadn’t been in my sister’s room since five years ago.

I missed the way I used to lay on her carpet waiting for her faint arms to wrap around me and whisper gently in my ear that she loved me, as much as I loved her even though I didn’t know, for I truly believe the not knowing wasn’t what was eating me inside; it was the fact that loving her was an allusion (someone I didn’t know), that is what hurts me more—I don’t even feel I deserve to even mourn her , this is why I sleep with my eyes open because those are the dreams that I can’t even control whereas nightmares occur when I close my eyes in the dark and I have dreams of my sister that feel so real only to wake up to the piercing reality my sister isn’t here.

My sister used to hum the song where it goes I am just a falling angel trying to find my way back home. Sometimes, we have to visit the dark places to heal. I opened the door to my sister’s room and opened the door to her closet and let myself grieve where no one could hear my tears, and the walls closed around me and the shut out the world. I reached my hand in the back of closet and trying to hold myself from the walls closing in on me and I felt a box scrape against my hand drawing a jagged line through my hand, it’s unsteadiness felt like plastic, it’s translucent fragility deemed it plastic. I dipped my hand inside to steady myself, my hand fidgeted around the tips of journals, my hand fidgeted against the bumpy covers, sparkly, flowery, pearly covers; my hand danced around each one. I choose the bright red one with the gold lettering chipped away by time—aged, and desired to be slit with ink to bleed such emotion in order to feel something, in order to contain the urge to rip into the veins of the soul pushed closer to the wall of the box shying away from touch, but gently catching my eye, but so innocently desiring to be noticed, but slowly sinking into the box, blushed and embarrassed at how human or vulnerable it felt.

It reminded me of my sisters wrist, small and slender; the red reminded me of her hair and the gold lettering on the front reminded me of the way she looked as if she was being eaten away by sleepless nights and racing thoughts and the secrets that devoured her, it was like she had gnawed on her soul, to feed the emptiness she felt in her chest, my sister was an artist and her canvas was her pain.

I trembled as I opened her and tried to feel just anything I needed—to be split in half down to the marrow, because a knife just isn’t enough.

10/28/10

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Gnawed at fat on my bones Slipped a pill down the pipe And watched it coil around my waist And watched the numbers fall Eyes sunken in my aspirations Of dreams of vogue Became addicted to the way the scale Brought me down the rabbits hole Spiraled out of control Tasted the vomit of my decisions Wrapped myself in disquieting thoughts Of being able to slip my arms around my waist I deep throated the truth I let it sink deeper in my veins and pushed my throat For daring me to vomit Every meal of last year thanksgiving I swallowed the pain because that was the only thing my stomach could handle Just not the truth just not yet

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Sometimes, we recede in the closet of our soul because we are scared to be seen as we are broken.

And I was broken, just like my sister.

I tried to heal my broken heart with poetic words of misery because I was tired of feeling. I didn’t want to feel this lump in my throat.

I hated the desire to miss her and allowed myself to miss her without feeling I’d forget her. If I let myself fall into the path of grief, but, I feared even more, I wouldn’t be able to pull myself out after grasping the truth about her, I believe it’s the feeling that kills us not the feeling itself.

Grief was something I wasn’t ready to accept

Chapter Two

I layed in my bed till two in the memory , shivering in the cold opaque air