finding elsewhere.

20th january, 2024.

this house is drenched in grief. i think that’s why it all feels so suffocating right now. the ghosts are packed into the walls, clawing at my hair. and the one i was most afraid of just caught hold of me after i’d tried so hard to evade him. i have no choice but to remember with tears sought from the deepest well.

lava made from glass. burning my skin, salt stinging the sores down my face.

i could see him as clearly as i ever could, standing outside my window like he always did. staring up at me, smirking and waiting for me to buzz him up. his wind-burnt skin on my warm cheeks.

am i romanticising it or was he my greatest love? the one i discarded for a seamy second attempt with some other man who broke my heart so playfully.

the idea that he might be the one and i have wasted thirteen years chasing love indifférent is almost too heavy to bear. too monumental to view with the human eye. craning my neck to see its magnitude.

i don’t know what to do with all of this grief for him. i see him so clearly in all his loveliness. his softness. his playfulness. his naïveté. always looking for where i was in the room.

and then that time years later when i slept with him out of boredom. a means to massacre an already decimated heartscape.

i was just so destructive. used him as an accessory for self harm. but i harmed him, too. and the guilt has for years been burrowing in my chest.

i found a card he’d written to me when we were still teenagers and the floor opened beneath my feet. how earnestly in love he was with me. how much he opened himself to me.

how blind i was to his flower, my petals decaying in front of his bloom.