Yes, I am a lover, and yes, I am a dreamer,
but everything inside of me is heavy, and I know now that you can be more than one type of person at once. The girl who jumps off the bridge and remembers halfway down that everything she fears is fixable. The woman who has woken up at 6 AM every dawning morning, for the last thirty years. The man who lost his wife, burned the photos and now can’t remember her face. Everyone, because everyone has lost someone behind, and everyone has made someone cry, and everyone has failed to apologize for something because pride is the only guarantee we have.
I play games. 11:11, 1:23, 3:33. Take your pick. I make wishes on everything, eyelashes, flowers, shooting stars. It’s not because it’s endearing, an adorable girlish quirk I should have long outgrown. It’s because I am not sure I remember how to pray, and wishes were always so much easier. I sit still and hold my breath. If I make it to a certain time, that means I am safe. If I can walk the floorboards without creaking, that means you do not hate me. And if my life is aesthetically well-aligned that means, maybe, someday soon, i will be able to go.
Because that spot in the mountains was the only place I ever felt at home, lonely in the town shadowed by the gaping cliffs, where humans once dug into the rock and where I could sleep. No city’s ever made me feel like that. No city’s ever made me cry. We climbed deep into the mines and turned off the flashlights. It was all just weeping water and three hundred years of pure gold.
“you can’t see your hand in front of your face,” my brother said. “you have no idea where you’re going.”
i didn’t tell him that i never do.