literature

exquisite ash

Deviation Actions

SycamoreSea's avatar
By
Published:
215 Views

Literature Text

so here's something simple:

i miss you.

i miss you in all my corners and veins,
i miss you with crooked hands and cracked lips.
i haven't stopped missing you since i
stepped on the bus and looked up at your back,
and looked back and you were gone.
i miss you when you're across the street and i know
you're there, that i could put on my sweatshirt
and my shaking hands and tuck myself into the rain
and go tell you i miss you,
but i am not allowed.
i am not allowed to still want you to kiss me,
because there is too much asphalt and ocean between us,
and because i missed a step and now you are an absent
column, fragmenting concrete, the cracks in the earth
where there used to be words.
i am collecting you: the fractals of grey memories
running along my knuckles like rain,
all the times i did not love
hard enough or loud enough or real enough,
all the times i dreamed you and could not
pull you back to waking with me, all
the times i held you in my hand and woke up,
fingers uncurled, loose,
emptiness in my eyes and heavy in my throat.
i miss you and i could tell you a thousand times and you would not understand
that when i stop looking or talking or
breathing you
take over, and we talked about this like
fucking adults, or we didn't, and your heat
is burning through this rain-soaked door but
you don't even want to know
you're alight.
my fingernails are lined with your ashes
and knots and webs
too old to do more than sigh when i try to catch
you, or walk
across the street, the city, the sea
to tell you
that sometimes not holding you feels like dying,
that i am so sad i do not know how not to be sad—
that this is not your fault but sometimes it feels like it could be, if
i were prettier and not so cold—
that sometimes i am not even sure i do not want to be sad, because
who else could i be? what do i have but missing you,
your verdant waves, your copper sea?
paint me with verdigris and let me go,
never open the door to trembling knuckles and bruised eyes,
but i will still press my face to the wood,
lick my lips for the lingering heat
in our ashes, and i will still,
between heartbeats and fingertips,
remember how to miss you.
3


this sounds like i went through a really bad breakup and now i'm being really dramatic about it but alas that is 500% not what happened.



written a year ago as an exercise in being simple and honest instead of incoherently flowery



please don't talk to me about this.
© 2017 - 2024 SycamoreSea
Comments3
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Seolhe's avatar
I love your way with words, it's always absolutely captivating, and it just sucks you in and punches you in the gut.