Anchor

I used to be your anchor. The reason there was so much beauty here was because we knew what it was like to dance with death. 
We knew how to build a home, but it was no mansion. It barely had windows. There was a balcony, I would sip my coffee there every morning, and wait for you to come home. Morning jogs were your thing, never mine. 
Remember when we laughed so hard when the bus took you away, and it poured all over my head? 
Remember when we sold the refrigerator and you pushed it into the hallway, pretending to be so strong? 
But this act of remembering I can’t trust. Just like I don’t trust that you ever existed. Memory is strange and sometimes  memories don’t tell the truth. 

Do you remember when you said “don’t you dare forget”? 
But without my anchor I forget.
I forget to take the garbage out, I forget that the toothbrush needs replacement, and those are just the small things. 

Pretenses

There is comfort in being a child that we lose as we grow older. Perhaps the Romantics were right. Childhood innocence is hard to retain and regain in adulthood. As we become adults, we don’t throw tantrums. We don’t scream or cry every time our needs aren’t met. We pretend to be fine. That’s what adults teach us to do. We learn to lie. We learn to act as though everything is okay. And we begin to develop an ego. The ego, the ego is a nuisance of its own. 

Yes, children can be mean. And they can be bullies. But most adults are also bullies. They hurt each other and use multiple techniques, far more advanced than just shoving you around. They use words and know exactly where to hurt you. They assess your weakest spots and strike you when you’re at your most vulnerable. You open up, you let them in, and then after peeling away a layer of your skin, they know they can now scratch you. 

So sometimes I think I’d rather stay a child. Somebody told me that there is magic in the human touch, a healing effect. Yet sometimes this magic is conditional and conflicted.

And maybe the child in me wants simplicity. I want magic to be pure magic, unharmed and untainted by logic. The logic that adults cling to, the logic that inhibits and represses, the logic that claims its superiority – the logic that slowly pushes us further apart, leaving gaps and rifts.