Tell Me Where To Put My Rotting Words

What is the most painful thing someone has ever said to you? 

I can imagine the answers. Insults, goodbyes, breakups, things said out of anger, things said out of spite, things said just because of hatred in someone’s heart. It’s funny how people have such a way with words. I can’t help but wonder if they know the things they say can settle so deeply into my bones that I will continue to feel it decades later. 

“Don’t be a stranger.”

I hold this sentence in the palm of my hand, and it sears into my skin. My fingers curl around the letters, their jagged edges cutting me, not deep enough for stitches but just enough to draw blood and leave a million little scars. A million little reminders. I crumple it up, hoping that it can feel all my anger and grief, and I shove it into my mouth, forcing it to the back of my throat without chewing. As I swallow, I can feel it slowly make its way down, my esophagus feeling every curve and angle of the letters. It gets stuck, and I choke on it. I bang my fist into my chest, and as I cough, it screams through my open mouth like a plea.

Don’t be a stranger

Don’t be a stranger

Don’t be a stranger

Don’tbeastrangerdon’tbeastrangerdon’tbeastrangerdon’tbeastrangerdon’tbea

I squeeze my eyes shut until I see stars and use my anger to forcefully ram it the rest of the way down. It settles at the bottom of my stomach, tucked in between an I love you and multiple I’m sorry’s. It’s at home here. 

I can’t help but think, did they even mean it? Or was it something they just tossed to me, a goodbye that they wouldn’t think about? One hell of a parting gift. I know, deep down, that it was spoken from a place of love, spoken from a place of respect. I know they care, and I feel it like a knife to the heart. It clocks me upside the head, and the blood trickles into my mouth and stains my teeth. It tastes like empty promises. 

Kind words do not always soften with time. Some grow edges like a dagger, spikes sprouting out its sides. It would be fine if spoken by someone who did not live so close to my beating heart. I would be fine if it were spoken to me by anyone other than you. But you are the soft spot in me, a tenderness with only the company of the hardened memories, the temper and envy that ferments inside my rotting organs. Cut me, and I bleed sad poetry that can’t seem to stop talking about you. 

I perform autopsies on this sentence and dissect it down to its cartilage. I break its spine and squeeze its flesh until it oozes from between my fingers. Do you feel it? Where do you put the pain? Where do you leave it when you sleep, when you wake in the morning? What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean?

There is a fate worse than death, and it’s trying to move through life with grief permanently carved into the side of my body. I learned to live around grief, to grow around it like the root of a tree disrupting the flat plane of a cement sidewalk. I have continued to exist in the ruins of your absence, in the demolition you left in your wake, and I am now alone to pick up the pieces. I write manically to cope; I avoid mirrors because sometimes I catch a glimpse of you in my face. I can not bear to make eye contact. 

“Don’t be a stranger.”

What a shame. I have no idea who you are anymore.