“What did you do with your sadness?”
I loved her too much to let her go.
I did wonder if she wished to stay too. I hoped she did- but I never asked it out loud. Out of fear of closure- such a nasty little poison for a young woman with so much left to nit pick and prod at- Closure.
Maybe we could understand each other more instead- Over a cup of tea, perhaps?
I would pour her a cup of my best Chamomile, if in return; she tells me how she always tears into my soul like a glutton.
I’d serve my heart on a platter,
She’d feast.
I’d tell her about the play I want to watch,
She’d tell me she cannot bear my burden any longer.
Perhaps the soothing of the Chamomile would make her forget how I’m gnawing into her withered hands against my broken fingernails with the desperation of a heartbroken poet.
She’s met so many of us in the lifetimes she’s lived, I’m sure she’s numb to the pain.
I do grow the herbs in the tea just for her, wild just how she likes them. Is it too much to ask that she picks me apart just a bit more?
The truth is; there’s a certain ecstasy in the hunger for life that my dear sadness gives me. The longing of it perhaps, knowing there is no cruel boundaries within the simple forgiveness of imagination.
It is simply yearning; and she’s horribly patient enough to indulge me in it.
I wrote this piece after a conversation I had with an old friend who wasn’t doing too well a while back- these are reflections of how she felt and how her words sounded to my ear, I understood a lot of them because it’s so much easier to live in familiar misery than unknown progression. Alas, this piece was born.. whatever it’s for.
Question for you all; Do you find it easy to be vulnerable in your writing? Personally for me I seldom write things about myself entirely, more about others or perhaps abstract emotions, cumulative realisations etc. I’ll channel myself through a veil, I can’t strip myself bare atleast not in the pieces I post.
Anyways- hope you liked this piece, feel free to subscribe and engage, or don’t! (Please do)
-Zoha
i sometimes imagine what I’m writing isn’t me, that it’s someone somewhere else and that there’re telling me their emotions and vulnerability. I use to think I can never be that vulnerable, almost pitiful?
I admire you for being so vulnerable in your writing and it’s the quality that drew me towards it in the first place. I have a hard time doing the same - feeling like I’m giving away too much of myself if I share too much. But I’m a very skeptical and guarded person in real life.