draft6/7
cleaning things out
she is a bruise beneath the blues, a pulse that pays perpetual dues, a quiet fuse with nothing to lose, a sky that swallows all its hues, she aches awake in undertow, a slow, below-the-surface woe, where currents tug and never show the depth of what they overthrow. she is the plea that cannot be, the key that fits no memory, a stranded sea inside of me, vast with its own vacancy; waves that crave and cave and shave the edges brave she tried to save, until the brave behave like grave and every want becomes a wave—and in that swell where farewells dwell, she cannot tell if staying’s well, for yearning burns and turns to shell, and silence rings its hollow bell.
she is a hush stretched thin within, a pulse that dulls beneath the din, a quiet spin of where she’s been and where she cannot anchor in. a salt-stung stare at vacant air, a prayer that tears but goes nowhere, a fragile flare of fierce despair that flickers thin in open glare. she floats remote from any coast, a ghost of want she loved the most, the waves engross, emboss, exhaust, they toss her hope from post to post, and in between the rise and lean, the slow careen of might-have-been, she trims the scream to something clean, makes mercy mean what loss has seen—mistaking peace for going numb, mistaking still for finally done.
it begins with objects.
small excavations.
drawers breathing open.
pockets turned inside out like quiet confessions.
old tickets, receipts softened by time, hair ties stretched thin from holding everything together.
each thing lifted, weighed, judged by its gravity.
some are returned.
some are released.
there is a tenderness in the sorting as though dusting is a form of apology.
as though clearing a shelf might clear the air.
as though absence should arrive folded, not flung.
then the objects begin to speak.
a mug remembers her hands. a hoodie remembers shoulders that leaned into it. the hoodie remembers how she held onto it and wiped her tears and snot on it. a photograph hums with a laugh that wasn’t felt by her. a video of friends she took in mcd makes her sob because she was left out perhaps. a video she took in a club with her first love looking at her with eyes full of love, which would be nothing but a convenient stare, she remembers the six year old who sat alone by the huge tree in lunchbreaks (which would someday uprooted like her heart), she remembers the silly teenager in school who would sit at one corner of the class and hide in the library in the lunchbreak because she had no one to sit with, she started loving books and her loneliness took up a new name of solitude, she remembers the long walks and bus rides from her junior college, her best friend who ghosted her, perhaps she deserves it all. all she does is remember. remember. re member.
memories dont stack neatly, they spill, they salt the floor.
still, she gathers them. wrings them dry.
tries to pack the ache into smaller containers.
because somewhere far from the room,
she is already in the ocean.
no shore in sight.
just a raft made of stitched-together yesterdays,
rocking under a sky that refuses instruction.
the waves are not violent
only indifferent.
they lift, they drop, they lift again.
push her east, then west,
as if direction were a rumor.
yearning is a tide like that.
it does not drown loudly.
it erodes.
so she begins to lighten the raft.
throws overboard what feels unnecessary
old arguments, screenshots of almosts, the weight of being misunderstood.
even joy is considered, held over the edge for a second too long.
because buoyancy requires subtraction.
back on land, the room grows simpler.
less of her in the corners.
less of her in the air.
not out of hatred.
not out of drama.
just so when the door finally rests in its frame,
no one will trip over the wreckage.
just so the people she loves
won’t have to untangle her from the curtains,
won’t have to sort through the sediment of her storms.
she mistakes this for kindness
this careful reducing.
as if cleaning could soften the salt.
as if the ocean would notice
how neatly she left the shore.
i love y’all btw <3
