Blue Jay

You suffocated me.
Not with pillows, but with pillow talk.
It didn't happen through grasping my neck, but through grasping my hand.
Suffocated, like puzzles left in their boxes.
Birds left in cages.
How could a Blue Jay fly, if it can't breathe?
How could I move on, when you continued to suffocate me?
Like envelopes over old love letters.
Written with heart, but torn by pain.
My body is an old letter, opened, tattered, torn, and thrown away.
No longer in the safety of an envelope, but the dark caverns of trash bags.
Treasured belongings, puzzle pieces, tainted skin, all thrown away and forgotten.
Skin remembers all, while it suffocates.
Your hands, lips, all of it, skin remembers.
Suffocation chained me to you, tainted my body, and along with it my soul.
I was enveloped in you, like those letters.
You suffocated me with the idea of you, with that damned smile.
The one I could never resist.
You had me then and even now.
It's been so long yet I'm still suffocating.
Drowning with no break for air.
You're still suffocating me, even after I tried to fly.
Blue Jays need their air, such as letters need to be read and treasured.
Blue Jays are a rarity, yet they are forgotten.
They sing in the morning, they bathe in the afternoon, and sleep at night.
All while suffocating.
If Blue Jay can do it, why can't I?
Although my skin remembers, my heart mourns, and my soul is shaken.
I want to breathe again.
I've been too scared to take that first breath without you.
What would that first breath of air be? When? With who?
Will it break me again to breathe? To move on for real?
Even though my skin and all that goes with it will remember you, will I be able to forget and move on?
Blue Jays have their nests, then one day, they make another.
Could I do the same?
I wasn't in a nest, I wasn't safe, I wasn't happy.
I was chained.
Chains and manipulative lies kept me with you.
I was scared to breathe.
I still am.
Suffocation led me to where I am now.
I am suffocation now.
And I don't know how to breathe.