Metallic Bones

The calendar looks like a dart board, covered in holes. Empty days and meaningless numbers, circles that don't mean a thing.

I used to mark the days, be able to count the hours since my fingertips last hit the keys, last strung together a slew of words that were possibly profound but more often than not just ramblings. He's gone now, no looking back, and I'm better for it. Everything happens for a reason, or at least that's what they say.

I'm like a swimmer out of practice, nose waterlogged and I keep stopping to catch my breath. God, this used to be so easy, but we're getting back into the swing of things. You and me, old pal. This rusty old machine is still good for something. Oh, and this typewriter's still here, too. How nice.

In some ways it was bound to happen, you know a human's nature must be stronger than the delicate bond between slightly-less-than-strangers. I'd gotten caught up in a messy web of sinewy connections, and I'm sure it'll happen again. But for now, we release. We relive. We write:

He'd been not too close but not too far away either, that's how I liked them, anyway. Enough to tell me I'm pretty--with his eyes--but didn't dare say anything. Just shy enough.

His fingertips were like paper cranes, careful and artful. Swan dances across my knuckles. Something about his smile, too, you know the way they pull you in. A laugh, a look. He hadn't been my type. Until he was.

We counted the hours using each others' eyes, found some sort of constellations right behind the iris. A ticking clock back there built for us and ignorant to all others. We thought it ticked forward, at least at first. And the longer I looked the more convinced I saw that it was a countdown. More I saw that the paper cranes were unfolding, and the stars were never with us anyway.

It fell around us like wallpaper without enough glue. Strips of rolled up paper, still sticky but not quite enough, whispering at our feet. A room of destruction but not enough to hold it together. Built to fail. Perhaps.

And in that room, no words. It was the one thing I always had on me, words. And I'd lost them somewhere, shoved them deep into your chest where I couldn't find them until you tore yourself apart and left all the words in the world pulsing on the floorboards, your flesh split on either side.

I broke you, I know. But I needed those words back. They fuel my ticking clock, no matter the direction. They're my sun and moon and everything in between. I wear them like prize furs, douse them in flame and scream them from the silence of my notebook pages.

You stole everything from me, and I stole even more. So here's all of it back again, the story of us. What you always wanted, no? I never did show you my writing. I never could. But my fingers are made of ink, made of metallic bones in the shape of typewriter arms. I can press my finger to the page and make a letter. This soul is bound in ink and wrapped in leather. Words become I.

Words could never become we.

So this is it, then. And my soul can breathe.