Our Words Are Our Years
february seventh
You have been staring at the mirror for hours now, hands tracing the outlines of your shape against glass. The sun is making you blind but you won’t stop looking.
You won’t stop holding yourself in your hands to keep yourself from falling apart, from ripping at the seams. There are thousands of memories and loves and moments and words beneath your skin and they’re begging to be released as dust into the sunlight to dance underneath your nose and inside of your eyes. You are beautiful, with your galaxies of freckles and scars dancing along your arms, the arms that keep me close on the warmest of nights.
You won’t walk away from this, no matter how much it keeps you awake at night. I could sing to you all night and you still would lie with eyes wide open, staring at your skin in the dark.
Let your memories go, they are killing you from the inside out.
Those people are so much better, so much stronger, so much lovelier than you, but they have no idea just how beautiful you really are. You are the most intricate thing I have ever seen, full of twists and turns in the simplest of conversations. I never want to figure you out and I don’t think I ever could. I need you to walk away from that mirror and wrap your lovely arms around me and make me feel loved. It’s been so long, and I need you here.
Let go of your skin and arms and scars, they are waiting to fall away from the binds that keep them together, and I will pick them up as they clatter to the floor and give them back as you wish. I will give you back all of your limbs and scars and memories and lovely smiles as long as you want them. We are standing in a road strewn with the remnants of people so much better than us, but we have made it farther than they have. We need each other and I need you, so let go of yourself and let me hold you together, I promise I can take care of your falling pieces.
I’ll keep them safe inside my birdcage of a chest until you want them again.
I will keep you safe.
You won’t stop holding yourself in your hands to keep yourself from falling apart, from ripping at the seams. There are thousands of memories and loves and moments and words beneath your skin and they’re begging to be released as dust into the sunlight to dance underneath your nose and inside of your eyes. You are beautiful, with your galaxies of freckles and scars dancing along your arms, the arms that keep me close on the warmest of nights.
You won’t walk away from this, no matter how much it keeps you awake at night. I could sing to you all night and you still would lie with eyes wide open, staring at your skin in the dark.
Let your memories go, they are killing you from the inside out.
Those people are so much better, so much stronger, so much lovelier than you, but they have no idea just how beautiful you really are. You are the most intricate thing I have ever seen, full of twists and turns in the simplest of conversations. I never want to figure you out and I don’t think I ever could. I need you to walk away from that mirror and wrap your lovely arms around me and make me feel loved. It’s been so long, and I need you here.
Let go of your skin and arms and scars, they are waiting to fall away from the binds that keep them together, and I will pick them up as they clatter to the floor and give them back as you wish. I will give you back all of your limbs and scars and memories and lovely smiles as long as you want them. We are standing in a road strewn with the remnants of people so much better than us, but we have made it farther than they have. We need each other and I need you, so let go of yourself and let me hold you together, I promise I can take care of your falling pieces.
I’ll keep them safe inside my birdcage of a chest until you want them again.
I will keep you safe.