I can’t escape the grip around my throat of the past choking me out. There is a grief that nestles deep in my bones and every once in a while it stirs awake. And with its wakefulness comes crashing a wave of distinct fear. A wave of ache. A moment caught in the light that’s frozen in time. My mind plays tricks on me and lies. There are parts of me, I wish never existed. There are other parts that exist, nay persist, and I deny them. They stand in the shadows, in the corners, and wait for their turn in the light.

Sometimes, if I make them wait too long, they seize the light anyway.

It’s a funny place in my head and I can’t explain that in words that make much sense. It is all a little warped and a little loopy and I giggle, in spite. Some days it takes everything to stay awake and other days it takes very little to slip into something more comfortable. Something that promises the noise to quieten.

I slip anyway.

My knuckles are white from the deathly grip I hold. On what, though? For what, though? Better yet, why? I couldn’t answer even if I wanted to. The line between self-preservation and savagery grows thinner by the day. I tread it with care. You ask if I do this often. You ask me to let go. I tell you I shall try. I do not try. I dare not try.

I believe in fate and higher powers and the purpose behind everything no matter how miniscule. And yet I have more questions than anyone could care to answer. The faith falters at times. I hold on to what I can. I let go of the rest. What’s meant for you will find you? I don’t suppose all that found me thus far was truly meant for me… Was it?

My roommate from last year texts me to say her mom asked if she could pick me up from the airport. I move in two weeks. I sob. I’ve been picked up from airports by strangers more times than I’ve ever been by loved ones. I guess that’s just because I’ve been calling the wrong people “loved ones.”

I’m on my way to brunch and I bump into a friend who lives in the same neighborhood. He has a few colleagues cum friends visiting and he’s clearly occupied with playing host and tour guide all in one. I tell him I have to tell him something and he insists I tell him right away. The words slip off my tongue the same way the tears roll down his cheeks. He sobs right then and there, on the sidewalk, and hugs me at least half a dozen times. I move in two weeks. I sob.

A friend of a friend’s friend texts me on Instagram and asks if I’ve found a place yet. She tells me she’d love to ask around and post on her stories to spread the word. I move in two weeks and I break into sobs yet again. I have never stepped foot on that side of the world and I already have so much love waiting across the border.

I have a job interview lined up and I tell my future boss that I’ll need a few more weeks before I can officially join. He asks if I’m happier to be moving or happier to be leaving. Before that question, I didn’t think there was a difference. I guess it’s the former. I might sob right in the middle of this meeting.

My other roommate’s girlfriend from two semesters ago tells me her dad would love to co-sign my new lease. By god, I sob. I’ve only met her dad once for all of 20 flush minutes; almost a year ago.

I text a friend’s friend whom I had promised could crash at my place on his way over to a wedding all the way in Cairo. I tell him I’m sorry but I won’t be in Istanbul for his days anymore. He asks why. I tell him I’m moving in two weeks. I’m fighting back tears as he cheers. Rejoices even. He says he’ll be able to visit me more often now that I’m moving to the same country. I sob.

I text a friend with whom I’ve had several falling outs. We still manage to find our way back into each other’s lives in spite of that. I tell her I’m moving in two weeks and she tells me her mother prayed so hard for me to get that visa. She tells me she knows I will be just fine. She tells me if there’s anyone who can navigate a major move like this one, it’s me. I tell her “stop even my mom doesn’t have so much faith in me” as a way to shrug off the intense compliments. She says “other people’s mistakes aren’t my business really.” I sob.

I book a one-way flight. It’s only three something hours. I’ll only have three something suitcases on me. I’ll travel two hours back in time.

I text a friend’s friend who is all the way in Mexico. He as good as breaks his phone rejoicing and cheering. I’ve last seen him a year ago. He says we must celebrate the move. I sob.

I think of everyone I’d like to say goodbye to. I come up with a palm half empty and a heart split across several continents all over the world. There’s not much left in this city or this place and I’m crying again but this time it’s out of joy.

It’s been about a decade since I last booked a one-way flight. It’s been just under three weeks since I cried myself hoarse.

I move… in two weeks.

The move has been three years in the making and yet, it’s all been happening so fast.

I sob.

I can’t quite hold you to your words when it’s been plain as day from the very start. The actions trumped the words but we’ve always been a silly little girl when adorned with the right words.

Tell me something, so I leave you.

But you did, didn’t you? Or maybe I did and that would explain it all. We’ve never really been strangers. But have we ever been anything more?

Be careful with the words you speak. The kind that bring you down to your knees.

I hope I learn to let go.

I hope I live my truth.

I hope I find the strength to be brave. In spite. In spite.

I hope my heart learns what it means to be safe. Soon. Soon.

I hope all this grief turns not my heart bitter and cold. I’d like to hold onto the softness that blooms within. The tenderness that, at times, feels raw.

We’ve both been so brave. But the war is over now. You say “we’ve lost” and I catch the scream that threatens to erupt from my throat. I place a palm over my heart that hammers something crazy.

It’s okay. We’ll be okay.

I can let go now. It’s New Year’s Eve and I find it just a little funny how, this too, was ripped out of my hands this year. And I understand. Some things must end for life to go on. Sometimes, we hold on to what’s never been ours to hold… for far too long. And at times like this, it must be torn out from our clenched claws.

Happy New Year! There are parts of us that must never make it past midnight.

You tell me that I deserve so much more. That I deserve a love greater than any you can ever impart. And I wonder what’s stopping you from even trying.

I don’t know how many more loved ones have to hold my face in their hands and tell me “you deserve better” and tell me “you deserve someone who can love you more.” And I can’t seem to understand why they don’t.

Why must I go out in search of love from the palms of others while those who claim to love me refuse to drape me in it?

Perhaps I read this story all wrong.

It’s okay to sit with it. You must, in fact. They do say the fastest way out is through. On the surface, I’m so over it and we’re so back. But on days the hush of night screams at me through the dark, I crumble.

Grace, I must give myself grace. There’s nothing graceful about the state of my mind nor the restlessness in my limbs. A typhoon builds under my skin and I sense its arrival and I will myself to sit.

Sit with it.

Truth is I’d like to. I can barely remember your face and I mark that up on the calendar as progress. But I do. I remember. When I’m not burrowing into decrepit crevices, gnawing at whatever crumbs of distraction the ache and fear can find… your memory slips into the rearview and I can’t look away.

There’s a grin I can’t forget and a quip that plays in my head on repeat. And there’s a choir singing a melody so solemn; the forests sway. And there’s laundry to fold and each day to get through and laughter from love around and I count my blessings. I pause where your name once used to be.

I draw up a to-do list and pencil in a note to sit with it. I cross out everything on every list made every day barring one. It’s been months.

• Sit with it

My mind cowers at the thought and the titanium walls tower overhead. The heaving begins slowly but surely. I sigh out loud. It bounces off the walls. “It’s okay to sit with it,” runs through my head like a festive jingle but the cassette player is broken and I can’t put it together and I can’t make it stop either.

It’s almost Christmas now!

It’s almost the end and we must shed all that we once were. But I’m stripped bare to the bone and the shedding can’t seem to stop.

I’ve suppressed more memories than I’ve made.

Psychology tells you that memories can’t be trusted and as time passes, our memories warp and fade into versions we concocted all on our own. And I held onto that hope so viciously that there were times I questioned my own sanity. I convinced myself that I made it all up in my head. It would be easier to cast it all out that way.

But then some days, the cage cracks and little snippets of the dark rise to the surface. Almost like a body drowning, breath rising through the waters in bubbles that burst at contact with the surface, the memories sidle their way to the top. I’m wrapped in a cobalt chain that drapes around my frame in an elegance forgotten.

Most days I feel there’s many of me within me. I feel like I’m seated at a table of mirrors but all my reflections have a mind of their own. We feast at the past and the present, voracious for the future. When the memories surface, a hush falls upon us. The air is thick with the stench of rotting flesh and we all can’t breathe.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon and I’m sunk into the armchair in the corner of a room that houses every version of me. And suddenly I remember. And suddenly I lose my senses. My heart hammers louder than the blood rushing in my ears. I remember.

Psychology tells me it can’t be real. It’s been too long now for me to recall anything with a fraction of accuracy anymore. And yet. I know the reflection that stares at me from across the table is 11. And she remembers. I watch the play unfold and I’m frozen in time. I can’t look away and I can’t tell myself it never happened anymore.

I slip into restless slumber and my dreams muddle with memories with fantasy with ache. I never screamed then and I cannot scream now. There’s a hollow in my soul that only deepens. I cannot look this child in the eye and tell her to forget. To numb it out. To bury it all. To lie to herself.

The day drags its feet to the arms of the night and into the beak of a new dawn. I haven’t moved. I haven’t forgotten either. My throat is on fire and my mind nestles into a corner it refuses to leave. And so my flesh sits pretty in an almost deathly glamor. I must wait for the feast to end.

Me, myself and I can only plod on forward when the light hits every mirror just right. And they must all reflect me. Today. Me, now. Me, not broken into kaleidoscopes of years long past. I sense the split and I step back.

I’m no longer in control. The ship’s captain is lost at sea.

I think sometimes when we’re deeply hurt, every instinct in our body pushes us to mimic the behavior of the aggressor. And most of us do relent. We give in. We allow the claws to puncture our skin and the venom to spread.

I think you carry yourself with the grace of gods. There’s a halo that dances above your head for those willing to see. It is beams, both of your countenance and that of the blinding light, that trip me. And only sometimes when the cracks dare to show do I see the aching hollow within.

I think we’ll be alright. If we let go and if we forgot and if we steady the pounding of our hearts, I think we might surface. I carry you in a pocket-sized heart of shards, and I slice my hands digging in.

I think one of us should leave. That’s how it goes. That’s how it’s meant to, I suppose. Like an outstretched yawn with no jaw to govern it, the chasm spreads. I think it might be best to let go lest this distance rips us apart.

I think you meant to stay. I think at some point we all do. I can’t hold you back, I tell myself. What I really mean to say is I can’t hold you. Not with these ruptured palms. Not with the skin of my teeth.

I think too much and altogether perhaps not enough. If I did, I’d string my words better and what unfurls forth might make a little more sense. But you stare at my conclusions in confusion because the plot knit its way down the ladder in my head. The story finished and you played no part in its telling.

I think I’d like to hold onto my heart tighter yet. I’m scared it might gnaw a gaping hole through yours and it won’t be satiated still. I can’t decide if that’s what I want or if it’s what I need. All I know is that it’s what I fear.

I think the story ends the way it always does. I was never one for happy endings and maybe that was a child’s way of expecting the worst. A child caught in a whirlwind of gloom can only wish for the night to bloom.

I think it’s time.

It doesn’t matter how far you run, it catches up to you at some point. It all does. And some days it crashes down like the sea against the shore pulled into the arms of a full moon. But most days its slips into your bloodstream and poisons you from within.

Take the hit. Shoot it up. You’ll survive. You’ve survived far more. But it always ever was at the hands of others. They don’t tell you that the violence you inflict on yourself cuts deeper than what anyone else has ever done to you. For at the end of the day, you still have to live with yourself.

He surfaces in my dreams. So I don’t sleep. Bad dreams, I tell you and everyone who asks. You don’t ask any more questions. No one does. Truth be told, I wouldn’t tell you even if you did ask. I’m almost glad you don’t. I don’t know if I have the strength to turn the visions into words. And words are all I have!

It’s almost a decade now and the weight never lifted. Not once. Perhaps for a moment, here and there, it shifted. But how long must I endure the ache? Does it ever go away? I walk this Earth a little crooked and a little wonky in places that don’t meet the eye.

They say forgiveness sets you free. I tell them it’s a weak excuse. They tell me God sees all and God shall take measures. I think God might be a little busy.

Sink me into arms that hold me through the night. I’m tired and I need just a little rest.

And where do I lay to rest this cacophony? I sink into mirth and pirouette in the light of your gaze. There’s a web that spins between my fingers and you hold the spindle in yours. The skies overhead beckon in the daze of a waning midsummer dream. If there’s a sound to be heard, it’s your laugh trickling down the nape of my neck. Like brimming honeycomb cells, we ooze onto the floorboards where the light breaks through the windows. It shall soon be dusk and the husk of what once was will flutter in the evening breeze.

When do I lose the feeling? I haven’t seen you in weeks. I think I’m counting on the slight possibility that you still inhabit these walls. That you never left. That part of you dwells in the spaces I occupy. It’s been a season and a half. It’s been a level headed conversation with god and what I mean by that is mirrors reflect more than your countenance.

What more do I reach for? I’m holding your face in my arms and it keeps me grounded. We pretend that we’ll be alright but only one of us is pretending. I pull the sheets over the dark and colors flash underneath my eyelids. The party never stopped. We just stopped dancing.

How the night bleeds and the day washes! It’s a clean sweep either way and I wish I could say the same about where I am. Nothing about this feels clean or done well and I pick at my mind lest I start picking at my skin. Tunnel vision in the way we burrow into what will bend to our will. We dare not lose control. I dare not wonder why.

Why do I count down from nothing? And the cycle finishes and I’m grounded once more. I can feel, see, hear, touch and taste. I’m here. This is real. The dreams haven’t stopped but we’ve grown to tell them apart. Simple trick of the mind that I pull out of my sleeve and the audience applauds. Magic in the way we’ve come this far.

Take a bow, my love! You’ve put on quite the show.

I know you believe in the afterlife. I know I do. Or did. Or will again at some point so far down the road, I can’t quite see it yet. I was raised with death sewn into the seams of skin hanging limply at the edges of countless gashes on the canvas of my body. I feared it for the longest time. And one day, throat caught in a fist tightening by the minute, the fear slipped away. Extinguished almost like a flame pinched out.

One day the heaving sobs caught in the gap between my ribs and my throat – lodged somewhere in the awry heartbeats not following rhyme or rhythm – quietened down and vanished. It’s been so quiet since.

They say everything you want is on the side of fear. The day I stopped fearing death is the day I started wanting it – like I never have before. The intrusive thoughts started blending into everyday fantasies and I stared down the cup of coffee on the tabletop and almost poisoned it.

Whether I wanted him to drink it or for myself to sip down dutifully, I knew not.

Before I brushed lips with death, tender in the sheer romance of it all, I was told about it. Stories were spun and scripture was quoted. There’s accountability to be taken and measures drawn. Deeds weighed and sins mounted on a side of the scale you’d rather not look at. My mother loved slipping it into conversation. Gently, but always like a threat. Until one day, it no longer sounded threatening. I think that was when she started fearing me.

I’d catch her looking at me, almost scared, almost pitying the husk I embodied. I’m not sure I blame her. I took the weapon from her hands and draped it around my neck ever so lovingly, it burned in her throat to ever bring it up again.

She would tell me how the angels visit and they will ask and they will narrate and not a word you or I shall or can say. In death is where we’re stripped of all that we embody and fall out of the arms of a life gone too soon. Death never sounded like silence or quiet or peace – at least not in the tales I was told. It felt like another chore to fulfil in the long list that I was handed at birth as I crawled my way into a life I asked not for.

What a shame!

I’d hope that before my sins and my repentance is splattered across the scoreboard and thrown into the arms of a just god… they’d let a girl catch her breath first. Just a moment. Of quiet. Of still and utter silence. Of nothingness.

I sat across a dear friend the other day and the words “God does not burden a soul beyond that which it can bear” flew off his lips. I chuckled softly. He caught my gaze from across the room and couldn’t help but laugh, too. He knows. Unfortunately, he knows. Perhaps too much.

“God must think I’m superwoman,” I muttered, not as silently as I’d hoped.

He shook his head and struggled to find the words to respond.

But that’s a happy thought, no? To hold the faith that if no one else, then your Lord looks out for you. Protects you. Only ever burdens you with that which you can bear. Not a speck more and not a speck less. Perhaps I give myself too little credit.

I’ve danced in the arms of death many a time but the jingle never quite finished. The song never reached the end; the kiss never quite sealed. My dear, would you promise me a moment before the arduous chores of the afterlife begin?

Could I steal a little silence before I stand before the angels and my god to atone and account and regret? Would you hold me in your arms a little longer?

Would you finally grant me that kiss?

And I say nothing at all.

The tv blares with a song I don’t know but the way the music rings in my ears and strings at my heart pulls me into your arms but only in my mind. The way the room around me buzzes with laughter and noise and the warmth of a dozen friends and yet I only think of you.

I’m plenty of red cups deep into the valley of stupor and the hollow within me aches to be filled. I only picture your gaze and something within melts with a warmth that smells of you.

My girl friends snatch my phone out of my hand. A chuckle shared by all of them bounces off the walls to echo in the hollow pit at the bottom of my stomach and all I can muster is a nod and grin.

I will you to appear before me, to materialize out of thin air in the space that beckons beside me. The dark couch stares back at me.

And I say nothing at all.

I think of you often. I think of you long and hard. I bite my tongue till it draws blood and I sit with my confusion pooling at my feet, spilling from my hands. I know not whether to hold tighter or let go.

I dream of you in brilliant blinding color and I pray to not wake up. But the day dawns and the morning beckons. In make believe I dwell and the blinds are drawn shut in pitch dark black out sweeps.

For days, I dare not step out of my room. For days, I picture you wrapped around me under blankets too warm to slip beneath. What use are blankets or the sun if I had you?

And yet, I say nothing at all.

You welcomed me into your palace of assured certainty and I, your queen, took up the entire kingdom. I reigned governess and sat at the throne in the glimmer of your watchful gaze.

And then time ran out on a clock I didn’t realize was ticking. And then the days constricted and the hours wrapped their fingers around my neck.

“You already knew you were leaving…”

Yes, but… I say nothing at all.

I cradle an ache, a need, a fervor for a promise unspoken. I find you in the heavens that descend in rain, sleet or storm. I see you in the kaleidoscope bouncing of the mirror in the broken rays of a dawning sunrise.

You swirl into my cup as I gently hiccup by myself in a room erupting with the joy of a thousand days.

You play on the tv screen of a song I wish I had the courage to send you.

You whisper in my ear from the ghost of a memory long faded but I still hold onto.

And I say… nothing at all.