It Feels Like Her

Have you ever wondered if you could drown without stepping into the ocean?

Without even taking the first drink?

To be broken

Like a flimsy token

At the arcade you played at as a child, shattered by emotion?

Ever wondered what it would feel like for some force to enter your lungs,

Fill each air passage,

Climbing up like the rungs of a ladder,

To have some unknown matter

Clatter up your spine,

Then rewind and blast the breath from you like a gun,

But have nothing around you that could cause such a sensation?

No?

Neither had I.

It just happened.

I saw her first when I was fifteen.

The sheen of her hair

And the gleam of her stare

Made me feel

Like she

Was a queen

Age fifteen.

I talked to her, and I was scared to death.

With each breath,

I felt like I came a little closer to death –

And a little closer to life.

I

Felt like I was above the clouds,

But the air

Is thin up there.

Something crept into my lungs, I swear.

This was the first time I felt it,

And kept me from breathing from the time she said my name

Until she waved goodbye that day.

I did not know what it was,

But I thought they called it “love”.

When I was seventeen,

She was mine.

She was my Athene,

And my Aphrodite.

She was my evening star,

And my sun bright shining.

She looked at me,

And her eyes were shining.

With her fingers, she traced the lines of my lips.

With my fingers, I traced the curves of her hips.

Like a script written by the greats,

I said how much I loved her.

She told me that she loved me, too.

I felt it again.

It started in my gut

And pulled itself up

Into my lungs, but

It really stopped my breathing

When she began leaning in to kiss me.

The lips she had traced

Embraced the lips I had dreamed of so oft.

They laced so perfectly together

As they held their place,

Racing one against the other

To go farther,

As far as they could.

I did not know what it was

But I thought they called it “passion”.

When I was twenty-one,

She was my moon and sun,

Undone before me

On the night we became one.

Dressed in white,

She said, “I do.”

I did believe she was my life,

My all and all my truth.

We held each other until the morning light,

Without the fright

That the night lends those who do not have someone to love.

I knew her name as I had never known before,

The door was closed,

And we gave each other more

Than we had ever given before.

She touched to my chest,

And with it, she carried the feeling.

It went reeling through my body

As each breath was sucked from me.

With each of those shallowing breaths,

I felt like I was coming a little closer to death,

But with each breath I felt her breathe,

I thought I was a little closer to life.

A life ever better with my wife.

I did not know what it was

But I thought they called it “happiness”.

I saw her for the last time when I was twenty-two.

I never knew

Why she flew from our home.

Like a bird that could not be kept in one place,

She needed to feel the wind beneath her wings.

She needed things

I could not give her.

I gave her silver and gold,

A hand to hold,

And a shoulder to cry on.

She needed to try on other faces,

Other places,

Other arms she could wear around her like bracelets and necklaces.

When I saw her this last time,

She had a new pair of arms.

They held her like I once held her.

She said she no longer loved me,

She drew me back down from above the clouds

With the help of those arms,

And that did me more harm

Than she will ever know.

The blow she dealt knocked the air out of my lungs,

And I felt it again.

Something crawled into those lungs

And chased out the breath.

Nothing was left when it had left.

She was gone

Along with all my will to live.

That will that she had given me

She took away.

My breath never returned after that.

I did not know what it was inside me,

But they told me it was called “anxiety”, “depression”, “pain”,

And a million other things

That could not bring her back.

Have you ever wondered if you could drown without stepping into the ocean?

Without even taking the first drink?

To be broken

Like a flimsy token

At the arcade you played at as a child, shattered by emotion?

Ever wondered what it would feel like for some force to enter your lungs,

Fill each air passage,

Climbing up like the rungs of a ladder,

To have some unknown matter

Clatter up your spine,

Then rewind and blast the breath from you like a gun,

But have nothing around you that could cause such a sensation?

No?

Neither did I,

But now I know.

It feels like her.